What an utterly fantastic idea. As a lover of all things mechanical I would really enjoy being involved.

Thank you for your support : )

Hi Leo,
Nowhere near your area, unfortunately. I am an artist in Florida,USA. My work inclines to the mechanical and your post sounds interesting. Would like to contribute. You can visit my website and have a look-see.

Thank you for your reply and support! I'll check out your website properly soon. Your work looks fantastic!

@jacobpennock Not by any means. I was just using "Call & Reply" to make things easier to break down and read. I think we should continue this discussion if you want but elsewhere possibly, it should still be available for others to comment on though.

Maybe in the forum section?

http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic...

For some reason I can't reply directly to your last comment.

I'll definitely check out your website and thank you for the book recommendation! Your input and views are appreciated and if any other people prefer your opinions to mine then we can certainly consider that direction unless you want to remain independent.

Your experience writing for technical journals is something that could be very useful for the guild/organisation!

Leo : )

P.S. Apologies if I appear to be insulting your intelligence at any point. I go into a lot of detail in my replies so that other readers can understand fully incase they haven't heard of a concept i.e. my previous wikipedia references. : )

Mr. Wolfe,

I also have long been the occasional visitor to the Brass Goggles website, but this comment represents my first real foray into attempting to contact and contribute to its community (aside from a small bit of irc ramblings.)

My name is Jacob Pennock. I am a computer science graduate researcher in North Carolina.

It makes me quite glad to find that there are so many who share in my distaste for all things shiny and plastic. It also makes me glad to find that there are individuals such as yourself who share my drive to, shall we say, take this steampunk thing to the next level.

I have been spending a great deal of time lately contemplating this topic and have some ideas I would like to share. In fact I have an alternative proposition for all the amateur and professional scientists and engineers. While I agree that we need “A rebellion against the torrent of cheap, mass produced capitalist junk that rolls out of the worlds factories to end up in the garbage day after day” I believe that looking to the past and “creating devices and inventions from a period now long gone … too admire and relive,” is not the answer. We should instead set our eyes and goals on crafting our future. Not that there isn't merit in trying to relive the past or looking to the past for inspiration, especially in terms of craftsmanship.

We often forget that the future is what we make of it. I propose that instead of trying to relive a fantasy steamy past we try instead to build a very real magical future. Clarke's third law states; “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I suggest that we mathematically and mechanically minded peoples start trying to apply this law. Our technology is really on the cusp of being able to do so. It takes very little imagination to see how wiimotes will evolve into magic wands, or how cell phones into crystal balls. With a big enough movement we could soon have a world full of elves instead of terminators. I would rather see a next generation of gadgets that would feel at home in a world created by Tolkien then a set of steamy ones. (Not that the steamy ones aren't awesome.)

So to all you steampunkers out there, if you want to jump ship and become technomancers or arcane artists with me, I am currently working on my own site where you will be able to find my ramblings about the future and read features on particularity magical projects of my own and the community (if I have one.) I plan on launching the site early next year but if you are interested in this sort of thing please feel free to send me an email and I will add you my mailing list. (lhommemagique@gmail.com)



p.s.

I agree with Max "WorldMaker" Battcher A Society sounds friendlier than a Guild.

Thank you for hijacking my post. (I joke : ))

Erm, the problem is, without offending you at all, the guild (or society) would strictly concern matters pertaining to science and sensibility. "Magic" is a bit too new age for me and so the buck would have to stop at the same place the film "The Prestige" reached. This combines science and "magic" in the most sensible and plausible way.

Our duty is not to shape the future. We are not an industrious power and I very much doubt we'd come anywhere near that level.

Also, our duty is not to force ourselves onto other people but allow them to come to us. If we force ourselves then we become borderline political and arrogant philosophers on the affairs of common humanity. If it's meant to be, we as a race will pull through and make that change eventually as a whole. If we really care that much, it will happen naturally without the need for us to forcefully intervene if that makes sense. Therefore it's not our duty to preach on how future technology should be developed but to passively show what it can become. Unfortunately this isn't a blanket statement with regards to poverty and famine etc however this is purely lack of action and uninterest by the majority of the developed world and the powers that be. Fortunately though, we are developing philosophically and becoming more open-minded and sympathetic, the price of course is losing many morals and ethics in other areas. To conclude, the world wants to feel a sense of progress, it wants more function than form and so the beauty and aesthetics from an age now gone is something of uninterest to many as we live in an increasing more complicated and minimalist world. A world which is now built on electronics rather than mechanics. We are however moving back slightly but in the form of nano technology where mechanical components can for example, resist the high temperatures that other electronic components can't. This could have a passive effect on popular culture if you look at how much electronics influence designs placed in the common forms of media advertising and print (Imagine an advert where they zoom over the printed circuit board but this time you see miniature mechanical components moving) although it could not come back into fashion atall. All we can and should do for now though is peacefully preserve our traditions.

Regardless, thank you for your comment. I'm not attacking you at all, I'm just showing my opinion.

Leo : )

P.S. I suggest using MailChimp to create mailing lists rather than sending out e-mails to a large list of people via your gmail account. Also, it might be worth creating an alias e-mail address if possible incase your e-mail address ends up with a lot of spam from being advertised and picked up by website crawlers. Finally, if you send mail from your e-mail account to loads of people on say yahoo, then yahoo may treat it as a spam attack and blacklist your address so its best to take a proper structured route via something like MailChimp.

Leo : )

Mr. Wolfe,

I also by no means meant to attack, offend, or high-jack, any of your writings or ideas. And I thank you for your response to mine.

In general I quite agree with your response. I did not intend to come of as preaching about how future technology should be developed. If that is how I sounded I apologize. My rational was more along the lines of; as long as we are on the topic of presenting ideas and gauging interest here are some of the things I have been thinking about if I were to create a society/guild/movement. I was just passively presenting my alternative opinion, hoping to gauge interest, not demanding anyone at all, do anything but perhaps give it just a moment of thought.

This brings me to my second point. I keep meeting a large amount of stigma when I use the term magic. I do not use it in the "new age" nor the "parlor trick" sense. So many people see magic as the antithesis of science, what I am trying remind them they can be viewed as the same things.

For instance, say I build a ring that vibrates when there is a toxic gas present. What is the difference in saying I augmented that ring with technology, or I enchanted that ring.

What I am trying to suggest is that it could be fun to pretend that the future is more similar to the world of harry potter and the things we are building today will be their ancient magic, so lets shoot for that ascetic. More of a lets start building the ancient mysteries of a time yet to come then fantasize about times long gone by. This can help solve the problems you suggest in people wanting to feel progress and having new functions. If I were to build a magic wand based off of similar technology to a wiimote, that could control most things in your home, lights, tv ect. we would have a new from and new function. I'm suggesting that we may be trying to "preserving our traditions" too soon and perhaps we should look at extending them.

But its not like the any of these ideas are mutually exclusive we can and would be encouraged to do any and all of them. I imagine there are a great many of people who would be interested in both. Which is why I was trying to present my ideas here, I'm sorry if you see this as high-jacking your post but I do not have the clout to garner a post of my own.

Thirdly I do dissagree with some of your response. You say "Our duty is not to shape the future," and I mean no arogance but I humbly disagree. I think there is no greater duty for the life of a man then to decide on what he sees the ideal future to be and to work towards it.

p.s.
Thank you for your suggestions. That is in fact my alias address and I assure you I do not plan on using it for anything other than gauging interest and catching spam.

"I also by no means meant to attack, offend, or high-jack, any of your writings or ideas."

Honestly, I don't mind hence why I made a cheeky comment, all ideas are welcome in whatever form : )

"I did not intend to come of as preaching about how future technology should be developed. If that is how I sounded I apologize."

I understand, you didn't sound forceful or preaching at all, I just disagreed slightly with your opinion and went on to explain the reasons in more depth.

"This brings me to my second point. I keep meeting a large amount of sigma when I use the term magic. I do not use it the "new age" nor the "parlor trick" sense. So many people see magic as the antithesis of science, what I am trying remind them they can be viewed as the same things."

Which is exactly how the film "The Prestige" presented Tesla's invention. I was just trying to clarify that it shouldn't go beyond that as I wasn't sure if you meant the above or something else, the reason I was put of from my initially understanding was because you used the words "technomancers" & "arcane scientists" which felt more like something that belonged in the WoW universe where actual (fictional) magic is used.

"For instance, say I build a ring that vibrates when there is a toxic gas present. What is the difference in saying I augmented that ring with technology, or I enchanted that ring."

Personally, my opinion on this is that it's all well and good for showmanship but it should not be used in a serious scientific or technical field. Imagine if a scientist said he cured cancer with a magic potion. It does nothing to further future development as what was truly used to cure that cancer isn't explained and is therefore useless to human progress, serving nothing more than a mere temporary novelty until the next strain arrives and you have to start from the beginning again. I believe that's why patents are in place in terms of mechanics; so that people can understand an invention whilst also protecting others from using it in its original form therefore aiding progress but protecting originality.

"What I am trying to suggest is that it could be fun to pretend that the future is more similar to the world of harry potter and the things we are building today will be their ancient magic, so lets shoot for that ascetic. More of a lets start building the ancient mysteries of a time yet to come then fantasize about times long gone by."

The above applies here however there's nothing wrong with mystery when it's used in the proper way. I'm not a complete kill joy : )

"But its not like the ideas are mutually exclusive we can and would be encouraged to do both. I imagin there are a great many of people who would be intersted in both. Which is why I was trying to persent my ideas here, I'm sorry if you see this as high-jacking your post but I do not have the clout to garner a post of my own."

No, by all means, you have no cause to apologise for anything, I appreciate your input and encourage it! I'm sorry if I come across as constantly trying to shoot you down. As said before though, we need foundations first and then we can work outwards to meet the middle ground in this area if it's desired so by the community. I have no intention of personally fully dictating the guild or society's aims and direction in a totalitarian way.

"Thirdly I do dissagree with some of your response. You say "Our duty is not to shape the future," and I mean no arogance but I humbly disagree. I think there is no greater duty for the life of a man then to decide on what he sees the ideal future to be and to work towards it."

We'll have to respectfully agree to disagree here if "...the ideal future" means "...his ideal future for humanity". A single man creating the future for an entire race would be a dictatorship however there'd be nothing arguable about saying "his ideal (personal) future". Ants and Honey Bees should be studied for their co-dependency in order to maintain a proper and survivable structure with co-depenency on each other. Did you know that in the most primal sense, the human body is merely designed to reproduce and then our genes start to bring our body into deterioration once it feels this function has been served? That's why we age and die, just incase you argue the mortal self sacrificial nature of these species in order to sustain reproduction.

Leo : )

Bees Wikipedia:

Bees figure prominently in mythology and have been used by political theorists as a model for human society. Journalist Bee Wilson states that the image of a community of honey bees "occurs from ancient to modern times, in Aristotle and Plato; in Virgil and Seneca; in Erasmus and Shakespeare; Tolstoy, as well as by social theorists Bernard Mandeville and Karl Marx.

Ants Wikipedia:

Myrmecologists study ants in the laboratory and in their natural conditions. Their complex and variable social structures have made ants ideal model organisms. Ultraviolet vision was first discovered in ants by Sir John Lubbok in 1881.[147] Studies on ants have tested hypotheses in ecology, sociobiology and have been particularly important in examining the predictions of theories of kin selection and evolutionarily stable strategies.

The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage and networking algorithms.

Ant society has always fascinated humans and has been written about both humorously and seriously. Mark Twain wrote about ants in his A Tramp Abroad.[157] Some modern authors have used the example of the ants to comment on the relationship between society and the individual. Examples are Robert Frost in his poem "Departmental" and T. H. White in his fantasy novel The Once and Future King. The plot in French entomologist and writer Bernard Werber's Les Fourmis science-fiction trilogy is divided between the worlds of ants and humans; ants and their behaviour is described using contemporary scientific knowledge.

I'll take your quoting my every paragraph to mean your finished discussing with me.

In that case, I thank you for your discussion. I quite enjoyed it. I do not have anyone locally with whom I could of had such a discussion. (I'm sure your in a similar boat, hence your cries for a "guild" of your own)

It does seem that we were witting in parallel a bit so you may have missed somethings on your first read but not much, my edits were fairly small generally responding to some edits of yours.

I do hope you check out my site next year when I publish it. I am a bit anxious, I am not accustomed to self publishing my ideas, or really doing any writing outside my publications in technical journals.

I suppose we will have to respectfully agree to disagree on the aforementioned statement. But I will say that I just finished "Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" by Steven Johnson and would recommend it to you in your research if you have not already read it.

I've been reading Quicksilver (by Neal Stephenson) lately, and the Royal Society of course plays a huge role in the book (as they did the scientific history of the time in which the book is set). Certainly a Society sounds friendlier (and less secretive) than a Guild.

Certainly a valid point! I'll make a note of it.

I would be interested in joining the guild also, but Alas I live in the USA. I am a machinist as well as an electronic technician, I also have many other talents that I didn't go to school for. I visit this site frequently and have always wanted to lean how to make clocks so congrats, I don't know how to start to look for a school that teaches that around here. I love the idea of starting a guild.

Fantastic! : )

I understand you don't live close, this is something we'll have to be quiet flexible on and should become less and less of a problem as the guild develops.

The course I'm doing at the moment is a distance learning course. You're free to apply to become an associate of the British Horological Institute and then take up their distance learning course either with or without tuition. Unfortunately we suffer from a lack of watch making schools in England too as well as the obvious apprenticeships.

Birmingham University in England run the course in person although the ideal path of study would be the WOSTEP courses in Geneva.

Thanks for your support and feel free to join the mailing list.

Leo : )

Quote from recent reply to e-mail:

"Also, most of the development will happen via the Brass Goggles site and forums until we confirm the name of the guild. At which point, a dedicated site will be created and we'll host our own forums for our members. This will move onto better and more contribution (not in the financial sense) based communities as the guild develops so that it's easier for everybody to have a say and be heard. Much like how google wave is helping collaborative e-mails."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDu2A3WzQpo

I agree with all the nice things side by Mr Wolfe here but why do I have to got Caimbridge to do that? I already do it at home and have done for ages!

A quick reply while I have 2 minutes.

I understand your concern Jinglier, the only reason it is in Cambridge is simply because I live here and we have to start somewhere. It's great that you do it at home but this is about building a community and having something where people meet face to face rather than in front of a screen. Supporting each other together and apart : )

Also, meetings wouldn't be compulsory but we would need some form of HQ structure with atleast a few of us who can meet. The more the merrier. I'm more than happy for others in other parts of the world to start their own "division" under the name of the guild if they so choose : )

Setting up divisional mailing lists would certainly be easy however I imagine most divisions would be quiet small and so this wouldn't be necessary. Obviously if the guild grows internationally then the current mailing system I have setup is essential to spread news from "HQ" and make news from smaller divisions, international news.

Update 2: Mailing list subscriptions are now ready! See the new twitter feed for more information and regular updates. http://twitter.com/TheAGIE

Sorry again for not replying yet, I've been putting all the cogs in motions today (No pun intended) : P I'll reply to everybody soon!

I would be interested in aiding the guild. Im an automotive technology student at the time being. I also live in Bridgewater, MA, which is about 30 miles away from Tinkergirl in Cambridge.

Thank you : )

Any and all help is appreciated!