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What do you do when you are promised no future beyond the next Steve Jobs keynote address or summer blockbuster movie? What do you do when your present consists of going to work, paying the bills, and trying to make ends meet? Our society would have you put your head down, work a little longer, try a little harder, and maybe order that 50-inch wide screen TV from Amazon.com.

The EULA rebellion. The fact that you're forbidden from opening a box, that some software companies insist that you're just renting their products, and that hardware makers intentionally cripple their devices, is a challenge to hackers and tinkerers. Tinkering is defined in part in terms of a resistance to consumer culture and the restrictive policies of corporations.  

The advent of cheap personal computers spawned a society of programmers and hackers who write computer programs for their own use and distribute the source code, the program's core instructions, for free to anyone that's interested. Over time, these hackers have coalesced into groups and organizations that are capable of rivaling the skill and ability of huge corporations when it comes to the production of computer programs and particularly computer operating systems.

To expand a bit on #5: More so than “expecting Star Trek and [getting] Blade Runner“, we were all expecting to be Da Vinci or Thomas Edison and instead we get DRM wars and corporate-owned patents. (See also: this article about a man whose bio lab equipment was confiscated from his basement.) There’s plenty to love about the steampunk aesthetic (if that’s your forte) but there’s even more to love about its DIY ethos. It’s emblematic of a time when anyone could tinker and invent (for the betterment of mankind, or for worse), when anyone could be master of their destiny, and we are all one clockwork automata run amok away from adventure.