Interesting post; I may have more to say on this later… for now, let me just point out that within the world of personal computers, there is a third alternative to what you call the “Linux aesthetic” and the “Apple aesthetic”: the “Macintosh aesthetic”[1]—which is to say, that which is exemplified by the “Classic” Mac OS (prior to OS X) (and, to a large but ever-decreasing degree, by modern, i.e. X, versions of the OS).
In the Macintosh paradigm, these things are true:
You do not need to know arcane incantations to do things. Things work exactly how they seem like they should work. It’s impossible to accidentally wreck anything (e.g., by speaking an incantation in a slightly wrong way).
Intuitions imported from an understanding of everyday macroscopic phenomena will often serve you in good stead when it comes to understanding, and interacting with, the system.
Your environment / your tools / etc. can be modified, adjusted, and so on, by manipulating them in obvious, straightforward ways. A great deal of customization is possible, which requires no specialized knowledge. (Likewise, you can fix problems yourself, without being an expert in “deep wizardry”.)
The “Macintosh aesthetic” thus seems much closer to your “steampunk aesthetic” than either the “Apple aesthetic” or the “Linux aesthetic”. (It’s possibly the closest you can get to what you describe, given the technological and practical constraints of “a personal computer operating system / user interface”. Small improvements—further steps toward “steampunk”—can be made, I think, but not large ones.)
And what is interesting about this is that just as you describe your experience being fun-theoretically sound, so the experience of using your computer was (and is—though, again, less and less so with each passing year) more fun-theoretically sound—or, simply, more fun—in this aesthetic than in the other two.
Back in the Good Old Days, I had subscriptions to several “Mac enthusiast” magazines—Mac Home Journal, Macworld, etc. Every month there’d be letters from readers, excitedly describing how they discovered one or another sort of “hack”—though that is a modern word; understand that no coding was involved, no typing of commands into a terminal or any such thing—to improve their productivity, to help them do something more effectively, to do some neat trick. These were not programmers, you understand; most were people who hadn’t written a single line of code in their lives (as I had not, at the time). These “hacks” usually involved manipulations of objects—files and folders; windows; menus; buttons; etc.—and these intrepid enthusiasts usually discovered them merely by “playing around”, which is to say: clicking on things and seeing where that got them; or having ideas, doing things which seemed like they should make sense, and finding out that the result was exactly what they expected. The whole thing was suffused with a deep sense of fun, of play.[2]
(One particularly interesting aspect of this, is how often the same trick was rediscovered, by multiple people, on multiple occasions. Of course, this is exactly what we’d expect, yes? If the “hack” is an arcane incantation, abstract and inscrutable, then discovering it is unlikely… but if it may be discovered merely by exploring a world of comprehensible objects, then discovering it is quite likely, and it will pop up again and again…)
Now, I write all of this, not just because this seems like a good opportunity to evangelize my favorite operating system, but largely in response to this:
But all things being equal, higher technology still seems better. If I were to taboo ‘steampunk’, what interests me here is the highest level of technology you can while still having gears level understanding of everything going on around you.
It seems obvious to me that it is possible to build, even in the world of modern personal computers, something which is much more “steampunk” than most of what we have now. Obvious, I say—because it has already been done.
Of course, even if you’re using a Mac, you’re still sitting at a computer, typing at a keyboard and clicking on things with a mouse. It’s not the most steampunk that we can get. (The world of the so-called “natural user interfaces”—a domain in which I have done some meager work myself, as it was the subject of my research during my brief time in academia—shows some promise toward that end; though getting from “promise” to “polished, ubiquitous consumer technology” is no mean feat…) But it’s important, I think, to have a good sense of what is possible—and, most concretely and importantly, of which aspects of currently popular aesthetics/paradigms are limitations of technology, and which are contingent trends (imposed on us by fashion, by market pressures, etc.). To that end, the “Macintosh aesthetic” shows us that we can get closer to our “steampunk” ideal via design, without having to make fundamentally technological advancements. That, I think, is a critical insight.
For obvious reasons, this makes your choice of terminology somewhat unfortunate/awkward, since who else but Apple created the Mac…? On the other hand, I can’t quibble too hard; you’re certainly not wrong about what the current state of Apple design is…
The same spirit pervaded the once-ubiquitous Macintosh User Groups—local clubs of enthusiasts and evangelists (again, made up of mostly not-programmers), who shared their Mac knowledge, swapped cool tricks, and so on. (One of my most memorable experiences in high school was founding just such a “MUG” with a few of my friends.) And, yet again, the same playful spirit was pervasive in the world of Macintosh shareware—which, if you are not familiar with it, is nearly impossible, I think, to imagine. I may write more about this topic in particular, one day, as it’s an incredibly fascinating—and, in my view, truly important—piece of computing history, which is in danger of being forgotten.
The “Macintosh aesthetic” thus seems much closer to your “steampunk aesthetic” than either the “Apple aesthetic” or the “Linux aesthetic”. (It’s possibly the closest you can get to what you describe, given the technological and practical constraints of “a personal computer operating system / user interface”. Small improvements—further steps toward “steampunk”—can be made, I think, but not large ones.)
Oh, yeah. And actually, I had the surreal experience yesterday of right as I was finishing this post, seeing Julia Galef link to this Mac Plus emulator:
I clicked to poke around the games, but what hit me with a surprise kick-in-the-nostalgia was ResEdit, which I have joyful memories of using to poke around the innards of various files. Once upon a time, you could edit any of the internals of basically any program via a graphical interface, swapping out graphics and changing strings. (I think the game Escape Velocity was most designed to work well with this but it otherwise worked)
I clicked to poke around the games, but what hit me with a surprise kick-in-the-nostalgia was ResEdit, which I have joyful memories of using to poke around the innards of various files. Once upon a time, you could edit any of the internals of basically any program via a graphical interface, swapping out graphics and changing strings. (I think the game Escape Velocity was most designed to work well with this but it otherwise worked)
Quite right. The resource fork, and ResEdit, was one of the most brilliant aspects of the Mac’s design. (And yes, Escape Velocity made the most extensive well-known use of it.)
(Aside: I use several Macs that run the classic Mac OS to this day—largely because there are a number of programs and tools that were created for that system, of which there do not exist acceptable modern analogues. The point, once again, is that many of the limitations we face are not fundamentally technological; we very much have the technology to do a much greater variety of things than we currently do… it really is a matter of design, more than anything.)
Interesting post; I may have more to say on this later… for now, let me just point out that within the world of personal computers, there is a third alternative to what you call the “Linux aesthetic” and the “Apple aesthetic”: the “Macintosh aesthetic”[1]—which is to say, that which is exemplified by the “Classic” Mac OS (prior to OS X) (and, to a large but ever-decreasing degree, by modern, i.e. X, versions of the OS).
In the Macintosh paradigm, these things are true:
You do not need to know arcane incantations to do things. Things work exactly how they seem like they should work. It’s impossible to accidentally wreck anything (e.g., by speaking an incantation in a slightly wrong way).
Intuitions imported from an understanding of everyday macroscopic phenomena will often serve you in good stead when it comes to understanding, and interacting with, the system.
Your environment / your tools / etc. can be modified, adjusted, and so on, by manipulating them in obvious, straightforward ways. A great deal of customization is possible, which requires no specialized knowledge. (Likewise, you can fix problems yourself, without being an expert in “deep wizardry”.)
The “Macintosh aesthetic” thus seems much closer to your “steampunk aesthetic” than either the “Apple aesthetic” or the “Linux aesthetic”. (It’s possibly the closest you can get to what you describe, given the technological and practical constraints of “a personal computer operating system / user interface”. Small improvements—further steps toward “steampunk”—can be made, I think, but not large ones.)
And what is interesting about this is that just as you describe your experience being fun-theoretically sound, so the experience of using your computer was (and is—though, again, less and less so with each passing year) more fun-theoretically sound—or, simply, more fun—in this aesthetic than in the other two.
Back in the Good Old Days, I had subscriptions to several “Mac enthusiast” magazines—Mac Home Journal, Macworld, etc. Every month there’d be letters from readers, excitedly describing how they discovered one or another sort of “hack”—though that is a modern word; understand that no coding was involved, no typing of commands into a terminal or any such thing—to improve their productivity, to help them do something more effectively, to do some neat trick. These were not programmers, you understand; most were people who hadn’t written a single line of code in their lives (as I had not, at the time). These “hacks” usually involved manipulations of objects—files and folders; windows; menus; buttons; etc.—and these intrepid enthusiasts usually discovered them merely by “playing around”, which is to say: clicking on things and seeing where that got them; or having ideas, doing things which seemed like they should make sense, and finding out that the result was exactly what they expected. The whole thing was suffused with a deep sense of fun, of play.[2]
(One particularly interesting aspect of this, is how often the same trick was rediscovered, by multiple people, on multiple occasions. Of course, this is exactly what we’d expect, yes? If the “hack” is an arcane incantation, abstract and inscrutable, then discovering it is unlikely… but if it may be discovered merely by exploring a world of comprehensible objects, then discovering it is quite likely, and it will pop up again and again…)
Now, I write all of this, not just because this seems like a good opportunity to evangelize my favorite operating system, but largely in response to this:
It seems obvious to me that it is possible to build, even in the world of modern personal computers, something which is much more “steampunk” than most of what we have now. Obvious, I say—because it has already been done.
Of course, even if you’re using a Mac, you’re still sitting at a computer, typing at a keyboard and clicking on things with a mouse. It’s not the most steampunk that we can get. (The world of the so-called “natural user interfaces”—a domain in which I have done some meager work myself, as it was the subject of my research during my brief time in academia—shows some promise toward that end; though getting from “promise” to “polished, ubiquitous consumer technology” is no mean feat…) But it’s important, I think, to have a good sense of what is possible—and, most concretely and importantly, of which aspects of currently popular aesthetics/paradigms are limitations of technology, and which are contingent trends (imposed on us by fashion, by market pressures, etc.). To that end, the “Macintosh aesthetic” shows us that we can get closer to our “steampunk” ideal via design, without having to make fundamentally technological advancements. That, I think, is a critical insight.
For obvious reasons, this makes your choice of terminology somewhat unfortunate/awkward, since who else but Apple created the Mac…? On the other hand, I can’t quibble too hard; you’re certainly not wrong about what the current state of Apple design is…
The same spirit pervaded the once-ubiquitous Macintosh User Groups—local clubs of enthusiasts and evangelists (again, made up of mostly not-programmers), who shared their Mac knowledge, swapped cool tricks, and so on. (One of my most memorable experiences in high school was founding just such a “MUG” with a few of my friends.) And, yet again, the same playful spirit was pervasive in the world of Macintosh shareware—which, if you are not familiar with it, is nearly impossible, I think, to imagine. I may write more about this topic in particular, one day, as it’s an incredibly fascinating—and, in my view, truly important—piece of computing history, which is in danger of being forgotten.
Oh, yeah. And actually, I had the surreal experience yesterday of right as I was finishing this post, seeing Julia Galef link to this Mac Plus emulator:
http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/pce-js-apps/
I clicked to poke around the games, but what hit me with a surprise kick-in-the-nostalgia was ResEdit, which I have joyful memories of using to poke around the innards of various files. Once upon a time, you could edit any of the internals of basically any program via a graphical interface, swapping out graphics and changing strings. (I think the game Escape Velocity was most designed to work well with this but it otherwise worked)
Quite right. The resource fork, and ResEdit, was one of the most brilliant aspects of the Mac’s design. (And yes, Escape Velocity made the most extensive well-known use of it.)
(Aside: I use several Macs that run the classic Mac OS to this day—largely because there are a number of programs and tools that were created for that system, of which there do not exist acceptable modern analogues. The point, once again, is that many of the limitations we face are not fundamentally technological; we very much have the technology to do a much greater variety of things than we currently do… it really is a matter of design, more than anything.)