Gizmodo: retro-future

Days of the 18Mb Future Past

matt buchanan — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:30:53 EDT

Via io9 comes this trove of retro-future spots, when 18Mb might as well have been infinity and the idea of women using computers was endearing, utopian and maybe a little bit silly. [WebUrbanist via io9]

You Can't Really Tell Time With Scope 2 LED Watch, But It's So Awesome You Won't Care

matt buchanan — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:50:13 EDT

The Scope 2 RGB LED watch is a beautiful piece of nerd time-keeping—fantastically future-retro, there's no goddamn way you can tell what time it is from a glance, thanks to its Rube Goldbergian way of signifying the march of seconds, minutes and hours. Depending on the model, green or red horizontal lines relay hours, while a contrasting color targeting box surrounds the current five-minute interval. And then you've got individual minutes as dot clusters off to the side and down below. By the time you figure out what time it is, it won't be that time anymore. Here's how this craziness works:.

But I still really want one—actually the fact that I couldn't tell time with it is half the appeal, and $200 is cheap for this much awesome. [Technabob]

MP3 Player, Steampunk Style

Charlie White — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 11:11:11 EST

Here's how they listened to MP3s back in the late 19th century, using this steampunk Ambient Enhancer. Handmade by a guy who calls himself Porkshanks, it features a gutted pair of vintage Cannonball Empire headphones whose innards were replaced with modern-day Sony earphones. He wrapped some handmade leather and brass around an ordinary MP3 player, and suddenly he was wearing a strange-looking device that looked like some sort of steam valve on his wrist. Let's ogle a bigger picture of the player, and a couple of views of it on his wrist:

Apparently Porkshanks takes his steampunk love to the limit, and this musical device is but a small part of his daily retro-future getup. Now if he would just get a tripod to hold his camera still, we could get a good non-blurry look at his gorgeous work. [Deviant Art, via Wired]