Tape Drives and Dummy Terminals

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 28, 2007

Filed under: Nerd Culture 103 comments

Rebecca talks about the “future” technology depicted in the 60’s and 70’s, which is filled with anachronistic (to us) devices like tape drives, blinky-light interfaces, and toggle-switch inputs. Hundreds of years in the future and they’re flying through space using technology leftover from the Apollo program.

She suggests that this should be a new form of “-punk”. Instead of Steampunk or Cyberpunk, we have some new kind of punk for 1970’s big iron mainframe-style computer tech. But what do you call this? Tape-punk makes it sound like MacGuyver, duct-taping alarm clocks to cans of cheese whiz to make cold fusion. What other name could we give to it? A name which sums up the stupid, clunky nature of the technology of the day.

Reelpunk
Mainframe punk
Solderpunk
DOS punk (I like this, but when mereged into a compound word it looks too much like “Do Spunk”. Doh!)
Digipunk (This would actually be more 80’s, whene everything was named “digital”.)
Craypunk
IBMpunk
You-are-all-dressed-like-idiots-and-your-technological-morality-play-is-obvious-and-stupid punk? YAADLIAYTMPIOASPunk! (Not very catchy.)

Maybe some of the old-timers have better jargon. I was born in ’71, so my mid-century computer lingo isn’t really cutting it. It would be easier to come up with a name for 90’s level early internet tech, because we had heaps of cool (now dorky) buzzwords to work with.

So how about it – what would you call the 60’s and 70’s future tech if it were an ongoing genre or style the way Steampunk is today?

 


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103 thoughts on “Tape Drives and Dummy Terminals

  1. Xiphos says:

    Flashpunk? Flash Gordon had all sorts of stuff like that. Plus, it has a double meaning with flashing lights, as well as meaning “stylish,” and implying something new, and that’s the sort of thing those old sci-fi things were about.

  2. MintSkittle says:

    I think Rebecca hit it on the head when she said it was retro, so I think “Retropunk” would fit well.

  3. Xiphos says:

    Oh, I thought of another one, StagnantPunk.

  4. Strangeite says:

    I don’t know if it needs to be called something-punk. In fact, whenever I think of that era of technology applied to the future, I think of Tomorrowland at Disney World. Even after the millions spent updating, it still has that retro feel. So my suggestion would be just Tomorrowland.

    However, if it needs to be something-punk, I propose HiFiPunk.

  5. VikingMonkey says:

    *shrugs* “That 70’s Punk”? Give me a break, I was born in ’79.

  6. Brian T says:

    Hollerith-punk.
    After Herman Hollerith who is credited with inventing the Punch tabulating card; bettern known as the 80-column IBM punch card.

  7. Having lived through that era, and having begun getting paid for programming starting in 1974, the term we used for those kinds of mainframes was “big iron”.

  8. Uninverted says:

    Clunky Punk?

  9. kanthalion says:

    discopunk?

  10. Dan says:

    Blinkypunk

  11. Hamish says:

    How would you see this as distinct from Retro-futurism? How does this justify the suffix “punk”?

  12. Namfoodle says:

    I was born in ’68. I remember that my dad used to mess around with mainframes at work and would sometimes bring home old punch-cards for us to play with.
    Punch-card Punk?

    It’s alliterative.

    I thought the cards were pretty cool at first, but they weren’t actually that much fun to play with. Not much to do when compared to Tinker Toys and Lincon Logs.

    It’s amazing to me that they were used as an input device. I’ve got a 2 GB memory stick. I wonder how many cards it would take to hold that much data? If someone wants to do the math for me, go for it. ;^)

  13. Clyde says:

    8trackpunk

    8-track tapes were the perfect example of dinosaur technology that was ripe for extinction when better tech came along.

    In defense of those old TV shows and movies, they didn’t anticipate radical new technological changes in the short term, but that’s not easy to do. Most predicted futures either expect too much change or not enough. Sometimes they do both; Years ago, I read a book titled “Toolmaker Koan” by John McLaughlin, written in 1988 and set in 2031, with a spacefaring rivalry between the Communist bloc and the West. The space tech was far ahead of where we are now (and are likely to be 24 years hence), but the Soviets and their empire are long gone, making the book about as plausible as Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles.”

    But who would have seen the dissolution of the Soviet Union coming in 1988? Perhaps the same visionaries who would have foreseen compact discs and terabyte storage in the ’60s and ’70s.

  14. Terran says:

    BETA-punk

  15. ToadeR says:

    How about THX punk? Anyone ever see THX-1138? Futuristic world with old-school technology. Lucas’ first feature film. Of course, you might have to throw old George a buck or two for using it…

  16. Nentuaby says:

    I favor something like “togglepunk,” “buttonpunk” or “switchpunk,” since the most striking anachronism tends to be single-purpose, mechanical user interfaces.

  17. Nentuaby says:

    Hamish:

    It’s not distinct. “-Punk” has come to be a way of designating the name of some specific style of either retro or stylized futurism. It comes of generalization from Steampunk.

  18. Mari says:

    Actually, in 1988 a fair few people saw the end of the Soviet Union coming. It was only a year later that with much fanfare the Berlin Wall came down. Two years after that, the Soviet Union officially called it quits, well after it was obvious to pretty much everybody that it was nothing but a corpse.

    Also, space technology in the 1970s and early 1980s was, in fact, well ahead of where we are now in many ways. We’ve been stagnant in the aerospace industry for too long and it’s moved us backwards in some ways. There was a brief fervor when President Bush challenged NASA to come up with a specific path to move us to manned planetary exploration. The end result was that the best NASA could come up with was a modified Saturn V design…the design that took us to the moon in the 1970s! When we settled for a low-orbit reusable vehicle, we doomed ourselves to decades of stagnation in the aeronautics industry and scrapped the hopes of “sci-fi” authors everywhere.

    As far as a name for the “future” of the 1960s and 1970s, it is in fact retro-futuristic. The “punk” label just doesn’t fit.

  19. Amstrad says:

    Retro-futurism is really the long used term for the future as it was envisioned by people of the 50-70’s.

    I suppose if you /had/ to use the -punk suffix you could go with Googie-punk. After the briefly popular ‘futuristic’ architectural style.

  20. Phlux says:

    I’ll throw mine in there:

    Clunkpunk

    Pinkopunk (in reference to the cold war era, and the fact that most of the people who made these movies were probably considered pinko commies)

    Analogpunk

    FOABpunk or just FOAB (future on a budget)

  21. Nazgul says:

    Punchcard Punk was the first thing I thought of too, but it’s not very catchy. What about Bat-Punk, since the TV (Adam West) Batman’s Bat-cave was perhaps the ultimate example of that huge, blinky lights, crank-the-dials-and-paper-tape-comes-out technology.

  22. Nazgul says:

    My Wavatar looks like it’s on the verge of vomiting, LOL.

  23. Mike R says:

    Maybe a little to old : VacuPunk (Vacuum Tube Punk)

  24. mookers says:

    I’m surprised nobody suggested TrekPunk yet.

  25. Telas says:

    PunchCardPunk is obvious, and is the one that will probably be used…

    LEDpunk? From all the LEDs used “back in the day”?

    Tube-punk? Not because of the “series of tubes”, but because of the neon and vacuum tubes…

    I dunno. *shrug*

  26. Davesnot says:

    DiscoPunk… RoncoPunk… ChiaPunk… PlastiPunk… HippiPunk… oh.. oh…. here it is… FunkyPunk.. or … FunkPunk.

    FunkPunk… that ain’t bad… or maybe A Very Brady Punk.

    I was born in 65… I actually set up a cassette player to enter a game into a computer (Adventure… into Apple II).. and we did it gladly… uphill.. both ways!

  27. Davesnot says:

    @ToadeR… THX was pretty cool.. but it hurt your eyes to watch it.. waaaay too much bright white..

    Say.. maybe SiloPunk for how important missle silos were… lots of gray and cement.. and blast doors.. simultaneously turned keys.. codes in safes.. big, square, blinky lights.. countdowns… steam.. Silopunk

  28. Rebecca says:

    Thanks for the link, Shamus.

    Hamish: I see two reasons, one being that “retro-futurism” usually refers to the 1920s-1950s. I’m talking about the period that comes right after that, when the original Star Trek came out, that extends until mid-nineties, I’d estimate. There was a shift in how futuristic computers were portrayed about then. Instead of huge mainframes with tiny displays and a lot of blinking lights, most movies switched to huge displays and no keyboard at all, like in “The Matrix” mission control or “Minority Report.”

    Retro-futuristic is, like, Golden Age. The Jetsons. I’m talking Tron. THX-1138. Star Wars. Star Trek. The original “Battlestar Galactica.”

    The other thing is that the concepts of “-punk” are technology and society oriented, while retro-futurism is more an aesthetic sensibility.

    My favorites are blinkenpunk, clunkpunk, and the non-punk names “big iron” and “tomorrowland.”

  29. DocTwisted says:

    My first thought was Cardpunk, but Punchcardpunk works better now that I’ve seen others suggest it.

    I can see now a world where everyone has a wallet full of credit and debit cards that have little perforations in them that a box at the cash register reads to process the transaction.

  30. hank says:

    I’m with you fellers.

    (Well, particularly the ones who advocated either punchcardpunk or blinkenpunk.)

  31. Alden says:

    It was common in Gerry Anderson shows, like UFO (supposed to be set in the 80s) and Space: 1999. Not that that helps find a name for it. :)

  32. datarat says:

    I’m going with Den Beste on this one. Ironpunk, as opposed to Steampunk or cyberpunk.

  33. Nathanael says:

    The one I liked most from this sample was the PunchCardPunk sugestion.

  34. Mark says:

    Having just spent the better part of the day watching 2001 and it’s associated bonus materials, I’ll forward HAL-Punk.

  35. Tavish says:

    “Punk” implies rebellion against something, somewhere. Cyberpunk is a distinctly dystopian future wherein the hackers or whatever are rebelling against The Man as embodied by corporations. Flash Gordon, Star Trek, really just have happy endings.

    Non-punk, because there are no punks here.

  36. wildweasel says:

    I’ve heard this style referred to as “retro-futurism” – mainly in things that attempt to replicate the future from the eyes of the 1960’s, like No One Lives Forever.

  37. Brian says:

    Given that the room-sized computer era began to come to an end with the first ICs, I like tubepunk as well.

    Shame about all the series of tubes jokes, though.

  38. ChuckP says:

    @Namfoodle

    I also remember my father bringing home boxes of punch cards. He showed me the trick of drawing a diagonal line or lines on the stack so you could restore order if you dropped the pack…

    How many cards are in a 2 GB stick? 2GB=2,147,483,648 Bytes
    80 columns on a card -> 80 bytes/card
    2,147,483,648/80=26,843,545.6 cards
    At .007″/card, that’s a stack 187,904.8″ | 15658.7′ | 2.97 miles high…

    Back on topic, I kind of like “Big Iron”

  39. JP says:

    My choice would be Togglepunk, Tomorrowland, or BETApunk. I think “Toggle” most succinctly captures the specific technological era we’re talking about

    If anyone ever read the Vonegut book Player Piano, that is verymuch written with that kind of 50’s World of Tommorow feel. Its world is set in a Leave it to Beaver meets IBM engineering techno-utopia. I would love to see that made into a movie using that visual style.

  40. Poet says:

    Plastic Punk, or just PlastiPunk.

  41. Davesnot says:

    GlamPunk.. GlitterPunk.. don’t forget things like Logan’s Run.. Rollerball..

  42. Radhock says:

    TrekPunk is an obvious candidate. A second thought is TomorrowPunk – tomorrow’s technology today sums up the period (I grew up in it).

  43. Eric the Baker says:

    My suggestions:
    Wirewrap Punk – from a solderless method of connection
    GlamPunk – already mentioned
    ShagPunk – the era of shag carpet

  44. Boingophile says:

    For previous suggestions, I like Solderpunk, Reelpunk, and Betapunk. My own entries into this are Roddenpunk, even though I know the original series ended in 1969, but you have to admit Gene Roddenberry is a HUGE influence on the sci-fi style that followed… and Frakpunk, a Battlestar Galactica reference.

  45. MSchmahl says:

    If this were a poll, I think i wold be the fourth vote for “BlinkenPunk”. I think this captures the major aesthetic of the era. A ginormous 240×20 array of blinky incandescent (for LEDs were unknown, or weren’t as efficient back in the day) lights captures the feel of 70s and early 80s sci-fi much more than tape drives.

    “Tape-punk/Reel-punk”, “Vacuum-Punk”, “Punch-Card-Punk” and the like probably better capture the experience of people who lived through the era (which I caught on the tail-end), but I think the blinky lights most capture the popular imagination at the time.

    Drat. Now I feel old.

  46. ngthagg says:

    My vote is for VacuPunk. Here’s my reasoning:

    Steam Punk obviously refers to the age when everything was steam powered (and of course, that is taken to the extreme in steam punk fiction).

    Cyber Punk is a bit less obvious. Here’s a definition of cybernetics:

    “The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems.”

    In other words, cyber punk refers to an age when the dominant technology involves mixing biological and mechanical systems.

    From these two examples, I think the choice has to reflect the dominant technology. After all, that’s what we’re looking at emphasizing, not other aspects of the 70s like glam, disco, or shag. Steam punk is steam punk, not victorian punk. And cyber punk is cyber punk, not . . . punk punk?

    Anyways, vacupunk emphasizes the vacuum tube, which was the driving technology behind the room sized computers.

    The only problem is that it describes the era, but not the future as seen from that era. But I think retro-futurism does the job for that quite nicely.

  47. C David Dent says:

    I liked:
    GlamPunk and ElectroPunk

    but I’ll throw in
    Punkadelic and Punkatronic

  48. Will says:

    I’d love to vote for Blinkenpunk, but I think the reference is a little too vague for a lot of people out of the know. Vacupunk would be a servicable substitue, but then again, there are a lot of dunces out there who will wonder what vacuum cleaners had to do with computers.

    That’s why I’d go with something even simpler. Bulb-punk. It covers the vacuum bulb tech as well as the bank of blinkenlights.

  49. I think it should be called Heinlein Punk, in honor of the Grand Master, who had some of the most interesting computers and gadgets ever imagined in his novels . . . if they weren’t still being programmed by punch cards. He actually predicted a lot of what computers could later *do*, he was just a little off on sizing and so forth.

    PunchPunk would be a good one, too, or TubePunk because those gigantic old computers didn’t use solid-state transistors yet, and that development was one of the things that was NOT predicted in old fiction.

  50. Will says:

    Actually, having just been through the comments over there, something jumped out at me. Rebacca mentioned that the prefix of -punk is usually the most advanced power source of the day, and mentioned electric-punk. She had the answer right in front of her. What’s the obvious and defining aspect of the entire Cold War period. Nuke-Punk. Before Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island, Nuclear Power was going to be the be-all-end-all. And you had the nuclear arms race looming over the entire era.

  51. My reply was anticipated. That’s what I get for not reading all the other comments first. I vote for Bulb-punk.

  52. Nuke-punk brings to mind Fallout style visions of post apocalyptic stuff, though.

  53. Okay, one more comment (three in a row, Shamus is going to belt me). I’m not sure it should be a “punk” at all, and the comment about power source is off the mark, I think. Why? Because of CyberPunk. What sort of power source is a Cyber, exactly? It doesn’t refer to the power source, but the most *prevalent* type of technology used in the fiction: Steam technology in the case of SteamPunk, and CyberPunk is just riddled with computerized gadgets.

    You run into another problem when you use the suffix “punk” in this case, however. The term denotes a fictional style that is dark, grim, and edgy, like Deadlands or Shadowrun. Not your usual fare for 1970’s science fiction, which was usually, well, stupid.

    Instead of worrying about punks and power sources, why not recall that was the source period of all bad cliches? I like SpaceKitsch. This works, because you can use it for just about any genre stuff from that period. SpyKitsch. CopKitsch. It works.

  54. nilus says:

    First off, IBMpunk doesn’t sound IBM enough, would have to go BluePunk or even better ThinkPunk. But those are all terrible names.

    And just as an FYI, as for anachronistic tech. I work for the big Blue devil and we still use Tape drives. They aren’t the big standing reel ones but we still use the small one to backup servers and restore build images. Sure a DVD burner would work better but all those crusty CEs wouldn’t know how to operate or fix them and what do we young punks know anyways.

  55. Rich says:

    Ferritepunk?

  56. How about FuturamaPunk, after the original source of this style?

  57. ShadoStahker says:

    Someone suggested Roddenpunk, for Gene Roddenberry. But I think they have it backwards.

    Punkenberry!

    Electropunk is a music genre. Discopunk probably is as well.

    Considering that the various punks are named for the thing that makes the advanced technology possible (Steam, Cybernetics, Magic for Magipunk/Magicpunk [yes, it exists]), I’d have to go with Tubepunk, Vacu/Vacuum-punk, Tapepunk, or PunchCardPunk.

    I’d say PunchCardPunk sounds best.

  58. Mark says:

    Perhaps these will inspire others. Here are a few buzzwords from the early days of computing:

    Silicon, semiconductor, transistor, integrated circuit, microprocessor, minicomputer/supercomputer, mainframe/terminal, token ring, vampire tap, Wargames (the movie), BASIC, ALGOL, FORTRAN, LOGO, Pascal, Data, ARPANET, IRC, QWERTY, DVORAK, dot matrix, Atari, Moore’s Law, CISC, RISC, bit blit, Alan Turing, Spacewar!, Pong

    A few suggestions:
    Datapunk
    Blitpunk
    Turingpunk
    Matrixpunk
    Compupunk

    Also, has anyone ever heard of Nullsoft Beep? Very retro.

  59. NobleBear says:

    DecoPunk or ModPunk

    Whereas the other names were derived from a major tech base here it seems more important to emphasize the relative aesthetic of the time.

  60. RHJunior says:

    What else but

    DiscoPunk

  61. RPharazon says:

    I was never really into the entire Steampunk thing. I like the new, clean, minimalistic style too much. I hate UI clutter. >_>

    Clutterpunk?

  62. Maroon says:

    I don’t think this kind of retro-futurism is actually any sort of -punk at all. Why don’t we go with Girl Genius precedent and call it Punchcard Fantasy?

  63. NobleBear says:

    @ Maroon

    I like your suggestion that it doesn’t have to be “punk” but rather it could be a “fantasy”.

    Although, after having seen episodes of shows like UFO, Space 1999 and owning The Prisoner series, the notion of it all being summarized with the “punchcard” moniker, doesn’t resonate, but maybe thats just me. *shrugs*

  64. The Woozle says:

    RetroFuture-Punk is what I’ve been using.

    I also like 20thcenture-punk.

  65. Doug says:

    I like RetroPunk, but the first one that popped into my mind was TrekPunk (or even TOSPunk for the discerning/pedantic Trek fan). :)

  66. Lots of good proposals, but Blinkenpunk is clearly the best.
    I also like Solderpunk, for purely selfish reasons.

  67. Reg says:

    Much as I don’t like the “-punk” suffix (same reason everyone else’s pointed out), I thought the already-established “dieselpunk” caught at least the ’30s-’60s part of it. Though I like “Jet-” or “Space-Age” (from Venture Bros. creators) and “New Frontier” (from JFK, others). Tomorrowland’d be great if we didn’t have to kick the House of Mouse a nickel every time we call it that.

  68. Smyth says:

    Commodore64punk. 64punk for short.

  69. Harvey says:

    I think FORTRANpunk has a nice sound to it, plus it’s distinctively dated to the FORTRAN era.

  70. Rustybadger says:

    A lot of people have been suggesting “vacuupunk” or variations on it; what about “valvepunk”? No, I didn’t say it first (although I did register the domain a while back). It does embody the paleo-futuristic imaginings of the pre-solid-state era. Kind of irrelevant to this particular discussion, however, as we’re talking about the 60’s and 70’s. The solid-state transistor was invented in 1947 (officially), and so was in widespread use by the 60’s. I would cast my vote for blinkenpunk, as suggested earlier, as EVERYBODY had to have at least one big binary light array flashing away on their sets. Even Roddenberry (who didn’t have any spinning reel-to-reel tapes but envisioned removable flash memory cards) deployed quite a few blinkens in ST:TOS.

    Valvepunk would refer to the era post steampunk, and might extend up to the early fifties. It would invoke images of beautiful wooden cabinetry with intricate inlay patterns housing banks of glowing vacuum tubes and flickering nixies. Less shiny brass than steampunk; metal components would be cast aluminum or bronze in dark or subdues colours. Also there would be copious amounts of Bakelite! Bakelite For Everyone(TM)!

    I will leave it up to somebody else to visioneer the aesthetics of Blinkenpunk, but I’m guessing there’ll be lots of plastic and smoked glass.

  71. Maddy says:

    Mookers beat me to it: I was going to suggest Trekpunk!

  72. Davesnot says:

    To sum up my spattering of ideas..

    GlamPunk
    GlitterPunk
    PlastiPunk
    FunkPunk
    DiscoPunk
    SiloPunk

    aparently “a very Brady Punk” is too off the wall…

    I dunno.. BlinkyPunk just reminds me too much of Pac-man.. that damn Blinky ghost!! He blinked on and off of the screen to save the machine from having to keep track of him all the time.

    If we’re talking power supplies.. well.. dilithiumPunk?? (yikes.. trekies will rail me for not knowing how to spell those famous crystals)..

  73. Dethduck says:

    I like Datapunk, it works and lord knows technologically that era and on was all about Data.

  74. Eric J says:

    Instead of Datapunk how about “DataBank”? Data Bank was an ubiquitous term when people were talking about computers in the ’60s-’80s, but once computers became common, it went out of fashion. I’m not even sure what it actually would refer to – system memory? storage? a database?

    Or COBOLPunk.

  75. Davesnot says:

    Except it’s not about what the computers of the time were like.. (akk.. I’m a dinosaur!)… it’s about how the science fiction of the time showed computers.

    All the sci-fi did give the blinking, glam ‘puters voices.. though HitchHiker’s Guide took the extra step with the lovely personalities..

  76. NobleBear says:

    To get some excessive silliness out of my system:

    LinkinPunk
    DaftPunk

  77. Corsair says:

    I suggest ShatnerPunk, or maybe Enterpunk.

  78. Mike says:

    Trekpunk
    Batpunk
    Polypunk or Plasticpunk maybe Plastpunk

  79. Hive says:

    I think most of the computers in those movies were operated either via a command line or a voice user interface – I can´t think of a single film in which you could see a GUI. So my suggestions are:

    CLIPunk
    Terminalpunk
    Shellpunk

    or

    VUIPunk

  80. Hive says:

    But to be honest… I vote for Punchcardpunk and Blinkenpunk. They´re clearly the best.

  81. Zukhramm says:

    Plastpunk.

  82. Oleyo says:

    How bout BeigePunk :)

  83. Doug Brown says:

    UnivacPunk?

  84. Luke Maciak says:

    I vote for RetroPunk as well. :)

  85. Blackbird71 says:

    There have been a lot of creative ideas, but people seem to be forgetting a few things. If you really want this to be a phrase that catches on and actually gets used, it has to meet a few criteria.

    First, it has to be easy to say. The word hast to have a flow to it. If it’s too difficult to get your tongue around, or too harsh on the ear, or too long, it’s not going to see much use. using punk as the suffix(not “prefix” people, that goes on the beginning of the word!), as it has a sharp sound at either end. Steampunk works because the soft end of “Steam” allows an easy transition to the p.

    For this reason, words like Punchcardpunk or any abbreviation-punk are out (sorry guys), too many hard sounds, too many rough syllables; and at each one, your speech stops and starts again. Think of it like driving a car, it’s never good to hit the gas to suddenly accelerate and then have to immediately pound the brake for a screeching halt.

    Next, the word has to have relevance. Many of the suggestions have very valid references in their root meaning, but are too obscure to become common use. All due respect to Mr.’s Heinlein and Hollerith, but no one is going to get those. With Steampunk, it’s simple and straightforward. Steam. Everyone knows what it is, and it’s use is very obvious in the technology seen in this genre. So, it’s both a recognizable name and it is easily seen in action.

    So where does this leave a few of the more popular suggestions? Blinkenpunk for one may be viable. It’s got a lot of syllables, but it doesn’t flow too badly. It’s actual reference is a bit more obscure, but it still easily conjures up images of blinking lights, which would be an obvious part of the genre, so this one may have some merit.

    Togglepunk is a little harder on the toungue, but still not too rough, and also is directly related to an obvious aspect of the characteristic technology. I would also suggest a variation on this, “switchpunk.” It’s a little harsh at the junction, but doable, and it’s shorter.

    Suggestions like “Trekpunk” are based on popular culture rather than the technology itself, but the reference is broad enough to be easily understood, so it remains a viable possibility.

    Then there’s the idea that you don’t need to use “punk” at all. Personally, I’ve never understood the purpose of it when used in “steampunk,” and it could probably be ignored or replaced. If you want to ignore it altogether, I kind of like “Big Iron,” but the reference is probably too vague to catch on. In the way of replacements to punk, might I suggest “tech”? I.e., Blinkentech, toggletech, trektech, switchtech, etc. I think it’s a little easier to join with some of these words, and it helps illustrate the idea a little better.

    Anyway, that’s my thoughts on the matter. Although, I probably think too much. So with that in mind, I’ll toss out my final suggestion:

    Chippunk

    It violates a few of my rules, and I don’t intend it as a serious suggestion, but it just popped into my head and I laughed. Probably because it sounds like “chipmunk.” :)

    Anyway, have a Happy New Year everyone, and be careful out there!

  86. Davesnot says:

    tech… yeah.. hmm… Discotech.. ha.. I still think a lot of folks have lost track that the idea is supposed to be based in the Sci-fi writing of the time.. and chips weren’t really mentioned much..

    Writers knew that they’d messed up technology in the past writings.. so they tried to be non-descript.. they still messed a lot up.. but it was often plastic and flashy… anyway.. basing the punk name on what tech looked like at the time is missing the point.. I mean.. steampunk isn’t based on the time when computers and things were run by steam.. it’s based on a sci-fi vision of a past that took a different path..

    I think Blinkinpunk fits.. and Plastipunk.. those work with the major movies of the time.. plastic ruled.. .. they got that right… and as for the blinking stuff.. look at the modern PC gaming cases… and neon fans.. etc.. were they that far off??

  87. Celti says:

    I second glampunk, flashpunk, and blinkenpunk. They seem to sum up the era; the first two moreso than the latter, but the latter works too. Retropunk works as well, although it seems kinda… off. I’m not sure. I like it, but I’m not sure it fits.

  88. Nyxia says:

    If I were to give a name reflecting the time period, perhaps Soulpunk (catchy, neh?). Retropunk sounds great though, because when you think retro sci-fi, it usually brings those images to mind.

  89. Chris Arndt says:

    It's not distinct. “-Punk” has come to be a way of designating the name of some specific style of either retro or stylized futurism. It comes of generalization from Steampunk.

    And I hate that! I hate all that “-Punk” stuff.

    It means almost nothing to me as I never really got into steampunk… so you’re trying to relate stuff to me by relating it to a nerd thing I was never into.

  90. Brian says:

    But why “-punk” suffix it at all? I’d just call all that old SF stuff “futuristic” in the same way that jetpacks and flying cars and food pills are futuristic. “Futuristic” has taken on the nuance of the old Tomorrowland, lots of white surfaces and chrome, and very little viability.

    If “futurism” is the new, enthusiastic belief in a viable, non-Gernsback future, “futurismic” could be a better term for that forward-looking attitude.

  91. Maya Do'Urden says:

    i second Punchcard Fantasy

  92. Musoeun says:

    By way of reference, a year and a half later I’ve actually heard “flashpunk” used to describe something like this in some obscure anime series (which one, I forget right now). So yeah.

  93. Kwg06516 says:

    The era you’re refering falls under Post Modernism, and cyberpunk is one of its thematic poducts, but “postpunk” and nearly all of the other suggestions fall flat to the ear the way steampunk doesn’t. Blinkenpunk doesn’t make any sense unless you’re thinking of the flashing lights, and even then it makes me think of Germany for some reason. I like beigepunk, since all the boxes were beige and covers the early PC era well. Consider all the anime made in the 80s and 90s about the near 21st century where computers are still in big beige boxes and had large optical drives.

  94. DaFinchy says:

    Reading through this, I noticed a lot of people seem to be lumping the 80s-90s stuff in with the original suggestion, while this in fact was when home computers were beginning to take off. 60s-70s was, as others have pointed out, still dominated by mainframes and tapes. I suggest that the 80s-90s take the term Digipunk mentioned earlier.
    One suggestion really caught my attention, and that was Nukepunk. This sounds *almost perfect* what with the Cold War and such, however… ‘Nuke’ and indeed ‘Nuclear’ is pretty modern talk. Let’s not forget the A-bomb. Atomic Bomb. Pretty much everything in that era, and in that era’s future, was atom-powered. Atomic rockets, atomic guns, atomic cars… . My vote is therefore Atompunk. I’ve also heard War-era stuff termed Dieselpunk, which gives us a nice timeline:

    Dungeonpunk (medieval)
    Clockpunk (clockwork)
    Steampunk (steam)
    Dieselpunk (internal combustion)
    Atompunk (atomic power)
    Digipunk (personal computers, brick mobiles, pocket calculators)
    Now
    —The future: either/both of the following–
    Cyberpunk (cyborgs, hackers, AIs)
    Biopunk (mutants, hybrids, elevated sentients (cat/dogpeople, etc.))

    Oh, and generally, -punk has taken the course that technological revolution has stopped or atrophied at that era, and instead the current paradigm has been refined. This follows from Steampunk, despite the fact that Cyberpunk came earlier. Language evolves, people, meld used to mean announce, gay used to mean happy, and -punk *used* to mean rebellion exclusively. Chill out.

    tl/dr : I say Atompunk

  95. Jim says:

    Transistor-punk? Relay-punk? What of 40’s and 50’s computer technology: Vacuum-punk?

  96. Idar says:

    Transistorpunk? Any appliance from those days with any trace of transistors in it was advertised with that fact.

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