Interview with Jake from The Steampunk Workshop

Interview with Jake from The Steampunk Workshop

Aether Emporium has a great little chat with master steam punk artisan Jake from the Steampunk Workshop. I featured Jake's etched brass moleskins previously. Between these and his other projects using his copper sulfate etching and machining process, he has been deservedly dominating the steampunk bandwidth for the last couple of months. If you click the link you'll find a photo of him in which he does appear to be quite the Steampunk gentleman dandy.

Anyway, in this interview he is asked for his definition of what Steampunk is.

To me, Steampunk is the Personal Industrial Revolution.
The 19th Century was really the last era in which a high school graduate had been given the complete set of scientific and mathematical concepts to fully understand the technology of the age. The death of Newtonian physics in the early 20th Century begun a time where we encountered concepts in our daily lives or read about things in the news that we did not have the tools to fully comprehend. Somehow, this became acceptable to most people and the trend not only continues, it accelerates. Steampunk, I think, is a reaction to that. One can imagine the steps required to make a steam engine from iron ore, coal and fire. But a silicon chip from beach sand? Sequence DNA? The mind boggles!
That's the "Steam" side of it anyway.
Now, take a look at some of the old copies of Popular Mechanics you can find on the net. You'll see that the projects within are pretty state-of-the-art for the times in which they were published. For a long time that sort of project was missing from the "Popular" mags. In fact, many of the "Popular" mags pretty much disappeared from the news stand and were replaced by computer magazines. The "Punk" side is the refusal to be limited and is exemplified by the likes of Make: magazine, Instructables, and Hack-a-day. The Personal Industrial Revolution is when, if you don't like your cellphone, MP3 player, car, or bicycle, you make one you do like - and you get to inject it with your own sense of style because you don't have to please the masses, just yourself.
It's all about the top hats and goggles.

Yup, Jake you are one cityslicker after the Dragon's heart.

via Street Tech