A converted coat rack in a Sharon, Mass., home that has been turned into a steampunk showcase
Have you seen hints of what will come after steampunk?
BDJ: I don’t think it’s been named yet. For the longest time, you could only use a computer if you went to a university or to a business. Then we had personal computers—and they were something you had on a desk. Then you moved forward and maybe everybody had a laptop. But now, people have laptops, have smartphones, have tablets, have multiple devices. Steampunk is allowing people to think about that. But what happens when we can turn anything into a computer? And it’s not a device? And we live in a post-device world? I think we’re going to need some new metaphors to think and talk about that.
And those metaphors are still being invented.
JHC: Technology has grown so quickly, so fast, and we’re only just beginning to grasp what it is that we’re capable of. That opens up all sorts of different realms of play and understanding. Part of the reason why the past has become so rooted in a lot of this, is because there’s more past now. We’re surrounded by access to videos and recordings and texts. The amount of material that’s available on the internet at our fingertips today is astronomical. It gives us a palette of stuff to paint with that we never had before.