What Ever Happened to Steampunk?

How the iPhone popularized steampunk… and how the iPhone killed it off

Illustration: Ariel Davis

You can make the argument—and I have—that we’re living in the design era of the cyberpunk. In Silicon Valley, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are all devoted to perfecting concepts first popularized in science-fiction novels, ranging from virtual reality to virtual assistants. Major…