Picking Up Steampunk

Steampunk, the Martha Stewart-meets-Jules Verne DIY subculture known for such labor-intensive projects as retooling sleek laptop computers with the splendid casing of Victorian music boxes, is going strong and in oodles of different directions. It may be the only design movement to have its own cookbook (haven’t you always wanted to brew your own mead?). This month’s issue of IEEE Spectrum turns its technologically-savvy eye toward steampunk in an article that describes the subculture as “draw[ing] on the elaborate aesthetics and romantic worldview of 19th-century England to envision how things might have looked had a few key technologies been developed further.”