I have nostalgia for futures of the past. During the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about futurism, in part because I’m deep into planning my blog about futurism and science fiction for the Gawker Network. And I realized that when I think of the future, I almost always start by thinking about how people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries thought about it — whether that was in essays (think Aldous Huxley or Henry Adams), or in fiction (I think of Frankenstein as the first true science fiction novel).

I mourn the dead futures of history, the zeppelin-powered transportation systems of the 1920s that never happened and the stillborn ecotopias of the 1970s. I’m sad that we still haven’t colonized the stars, the way futurists have been predicting for over 100 years. And what about all those predictions, starting in the 1920s, that someday soon we’d have robot companions? I don’t think iRobot vacuum cleaners count. Read more about the tragedy of lost futures.

I hate to sound starry-eyed and cheesy, but going to women’s tech conference BlogHer was truly inspiring. It was the first time in my life I’d been surrounded by hundreds of women who work in technology. These women love tech for all different kinds of reasons and come from a zillion different backgrounds. There were tomboys, mommies, punks, tarts, ladies, bitches, nerds, and girls. There were professional women in suits and perfect hair, and grubby rockabilly gals in tattoos and tight dresses.

Because so many of us were there, we stopped being women and just became humans. This is an incredibly rare experience in the tech industry. Usually at a tech conference, women make up about 25% of the audience, and about 10% of the speakers. We stick out like sore thumbs — we are “the women,” not just part the geek crowd. Even when we’re surrounded by cool guys who treat us like perfect equals, we can’t help but notice that we’re a minority and I, at least, feel obligated to be smarter, faster, and better than the men around me to prove that WOMEN BELONG HERE TOO.

At BlogHer, I realized that I should stop being so damn sensitive when I’m in those male-dominated environments. There are tons of other women like me, and soon there will be more of us (thanks to all those mommy bloggers, we’re breeding like bunnies). We don’t have anything to prove. We are geeks, and if some guys have a problem with that, then that’s their fucked-up issue and not mine.

A big thank-you to Elisa Camahort for inviting me to BlogHer! I had a great time attending several awesome panels. Gina Trapani and Barb Dybwad ruled the school with their talk on time-saving tech for bloggers; blogger-friendly lit agent Kate Lee and author/blogger Ariel Meadow Stallings had great advice on the panel about blogs and books; Susie Bright had incisive comments on the way women’s social power is squashed when we’re told that the online world is fraught with danger; Tara Hunt gave a smart and fascinating account of the Kathy Sierra scandal; Liz Henry urged us to talk back and intervene when blog comments get sexist and racist; Mur Lafferty and Jason Adams addicted me to their vidcast This Day in Alternate History; BlogHer founder Lisa Stone rocked the house every time she talked; and my fellow keynoters Esther Dyson and Rashmi Sinha were a pleasure to chat with in front of hundreds of people.

What’s my point? Oh yeah. Women rule.

I’m at the amazing, all-woman blogging conference BlogHer, where hundreds of women have converged on Chicago and are geeking out about Greasemonkey scripts and debating whether Ecto is better than ScribeFire. Plus, I’ll admit that there are a lot of really hot shoes.

Tomorrow morning at 9 AM, I’ll be part of a keynote conversation on the future of women in technology — as well as the future of technology itself — along with two other fantastic speakers: Esther Dyson and Rashmi Sinha. If you’re at BlogHer, or if you’re in the Chicago area, come out to the ballroom at the Navy Pier tomorrow morning and say hi!

I wasn’t immune to the recent press frenzies over the release of two of the season’s biggest techie thrill-rides: the iPhone and the Michael Bay movie Transformers.

I don’t have an iPhone but some of my best friends do. I’ve touched them, caressed them, and I still think they suck. But not for the reasons you might think. I don’t hate them for their technical flaws, though of course it’s hard not to dislike the idea of a tool whose battery can’t be changed unless you send it back to the manufacturer. Plus, the DRM. But the troubling politics of the iPhone go beyond tech. These devices have even been the subject of debates in Congress. And as I say in a recent column:

The iPhone is political because it somehow manages to capture the essence of authoritarianism in its shiny little box. Totally locked down, it runs only preapproved software on a prechosen phone network that is subject to government surveillance.

Read more about that.

I also liked Transformers. I know, I know it was all flashy crap and had the silliest plot ever. But I thought the eBay jokes were funny, and I liked the fact that it was about teenagers who curse and are obsessed with sex — not like those sanitized, unrealistic teens you normally see in Disney vehicles. Plus, you’ve gotta love a movie where characters yell, “All hail Megatron!” Read more about why I think Transformers is more than just a truck commercial here.

Tomorrow night marks the return of Nerd Salon, a semi-irregular geek meetup organized by myself and Jennifer Granick. Come down to 111 Minna from 6-9 PM and hang out with nerds of all stripes. There will be a demo of GNU Radio from Matt Ettus, and a puzzle for you to solve (yes, there is a prize!). Jovino spins geeky tunes. Put on your propeller beanie, bring some comic books or weird electronics items to trade, and prepare to get your nerd on. See you there!

I’ve lately been intrigued with nineteenth century aesthetics, and therefore it should be no surprise that I’m one of the many dorks who admires “steampunk,” an artistic style that marries computer tech with Victorian design. Many would trace the origins of steampunk back to the Bruce Sterling/William Gibson novel The Difference Engine, an alt.history thriller hinging on the idea that computers are invented in the nineteenth century. Others would say that H.P. Lovecraft’s weird fiction started the whole movement back in the 1920s by blending contemporary science with Romantic monsters and mysticism.

No matter what its origins, steampunk has come into its own over the past few years. It’s jumped from literary genre to industrial design, and now there are a spate of steampunk artists as well as steampunk movies and bloggers. In my latest column, I talk about why people are drawn to artistic styles of the past, and especially why they want to turn computers into things that look like steam-driven tech. I suppose you could say I look at the dark side of steampunk. Read more.