Being More Human is a fascinating article written by Brian David Johnson, Intel’s resident futurist. He explains how steampunk culture offers clues to building a better future:

Steampunk has emotion and passion; it has an opinion and a point of view. It is sassy and thoughtful and optimistic about what could be built. It is convinced we can build a better future by envisioning a different past. Steampunk shows us that people want the devices and the technology in their lives to have a sense of humor, history, and humanity. This desire has radical implications for the type of future we could build.

He then discusses how steampunk reveals three relationships that people want with their technology, and concludes as follows:

When I tell people I’m a futurist and an optimist, they seem surprised and amused. People expect all futurists to be pessimistic prophets of doom. I’m not like that. The future is going to be awesome because we are going to build it. The future is not some fixed point on the horizon that we are all helplessly hurtling toward. Quite the opposite: the future is made every day by people’s actions. We all, on some level, create the future. From the family we raise, to the community we live in, to the business we do, we build the future. We all need to be active participants in imagining the future: the one we want and the one we want to avoid. Then we need to do something about it.

I try hard to stay away from the word “must-read” in these posts, but I’m going to relax my guard on this one, being holiday and all. So, really — read it!