Don't computers hear need to be thwacked with hammers sometimes? :p

But I know (I think) what you mean - steampunk technology just seems so much more real than real technology. You can see its workings and it has heft and weight, instead of being this tiny little nothing that makes everything it does seem so easy.

I keep meaning to read more steam-punk type stuff, but it's hard to find things that don't ping my Victorian buttons.

I've heard of Perdido Street Station; I vacillate on whether to read it because I've heard that it's wonderful and beautiful imagined and well-written; but, alternatively, it's depressing and gruesome and...still well-written, but so depressing.