Poem: "lacquerware"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the April 3, 2012 Poetry Fishbowl.  It was inspired by siliconshaman who wanted Edopunk.  I hunted around in the Edo period and its technology, eventually turning up some interesting tidbits about lacquer.  The poem has been sponsored by laffingkat.

lacquerware

an accident in
the chemistry of lacquer
would change everything

urushi lacquer

Comments

[fayanora]

Neat!

[siege]

I like this. I imagine setting a lacquer tea pourer in sunlight, and receiving a reading from the I Ching based on which cup has been selected, and the depth of the pour. Or an automatic abacus with a layered lacquer backing that tells the gravity-driven motors which beads to move.

[paka]

Oh, that's awesome! As alternate history goes that's ridiculously believable!

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I enjoy looking for ways that things could have gone differently. I'm very good at spotting patterns and parallels. If things can be constructed in similar ways, sometimes they can be made to perform similar functions. And if things react to a certain stimulus, that can often be tweaked around until it does something useful.

[kelkyag]

Interesting!

I wonder what the inputs and outputs for these systems look like.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Mechanical or programming?

Re: Hmm...

[kelkyag]

Either, but particularly human-perceptible output. Programable devices are relatively new; early on, "programming" would have been hardware design for a device with a fixed function or small/related set of functions. But to be useful, it has to deliver some result in some form -- light, heat, sound, scent, movement ...

(I'm not sure what range of things we do now with electronics you're proposing to do with lacquerware -- the flow the poem suggests leaping straight to things that function like modern integrated circuits, without a lot of the bulkier stages we went through along the way. And this is a fine place to wave poetic license at me.)

[siliconshaman]

The edo period had lacquer and silk armour as well, which was actually bullet proof!

Hmm, now combine that with the automata that reached their zenith during that time, and that would be amazing...

Although... if one limits it to lacquer-ware computers, then the role of the tea-house and the geisha would change, no?