I recently came across Steampunk Magazine, an instigating, free-to-download publication that has arrived at its second issue after a much-lauded first edition, with the theme, “A Journal of Misapplied Technology”. One of the highlights of the issue is a feature about coal, the production of which is an environmental disaster (did you know that it takes 714lbs. of coal to keep a light bulb on 24 hours a day for a year?).
I particularly loved the quote by Erica Amelia Smith in the introduction to the issue, taken from her An Address as to the Nature of the “Proper” Uses of Technology” and which I think is well worth reproducing verbatim:
“It’s too constricting to say that you must always think outside the box; whether you are thinking inside or outside the box, you are stll letting the box dictate your thoughts, are you not? What you are not acknowledging is the honest fact the “the box” is figmentary, illusory. And as long as one continues to act in reaction to this perceived set of dictates, one cannot be truly original in thought.”
Now, that is something to think about.
