Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

users.wpi.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 469 posts

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#381

Post by mathgeek »

billiam wrote: post #264
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #134

I read this story in 4th grade. It felt like the future. Now, it feels like most of the technology is within reach - at least, it could be built. The automated stove being the main exception. But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet.

The vision of the automated stove is partly fulfilled, at least around San Francisco, by the astounding number of people who get all their meals delivered, for the moment by humans but soon robots.

Still looking forward to the foodarackacycle.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#382

Post by mathgeek »

XorNot wrote: post #263
cautiouscat wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're closer to the stove, kind of. At least with things like Tovala. I've never actually met someone with one though.

I really wish we could just get a thermal imager integration for a stove which could catch a pot of boiling water about to boil over and back off the heat automatically.

Electric kettles have done this for decades. The tech is also in sous vide machines.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#383

Post by Gud »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #357
paulorlando wrote: post #201

It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon." In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must co…

> " It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. " Quite the reverse. That people say that the fear of war (nuclear or not) is "quaint" means that the wealthy and privileged first world has forgotten about war and that's not a normal state of affairs. The 18th and 19th centuries were wracked by war after war between major powers, cu…

Indeed. We are sleepwalking into WW III and no one seems to care.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#384

Post by chipotle_coyote »

apelapan wrote: post #278
billiam wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quaint? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

Nuclear annihilation on any sort of global scale is further off than ever in the past 60-70 years or so. The doomsday clock is mostly worrying about climate change, conventional war and Facebook boomers spreading and believing fake news. I don't mean that things are fine, just that Nuclear annihilation is less of a concern than some make it out to be.

This is actually still a reasonable concern to have. Coincidentally, just yesterday I came across a reference to the book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen, speculating on how a global thermonuclear war could start in modern times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario

The scenario she presents is fictional, but it’s all based on current nuclear arsenals and response protocols. While what I’ve read of it certainly makes it seem like a worst-case scenario in a “nearly everything that can go wrong does” sense, it’s disturbing how relatively few things going wrong it actually takes—in a span of under two hours—to reach “civilizational collapse” level outcomes.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#385

Post by dudinax »

paulorlando wrote: post #201

It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon." In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must co…

quaint?

I don't think we're going to make it.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#386

Post by troupo »

inigyou wrote: post #167
troupo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onve again it's been shown that consumers do care when they are properly shown the extent of data collection and/or are allowed to opt out. E.g. when iOS introduced "ask apps to not track", 96% of users clicked "do not track" : https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o... If consumers didn't care, companies wouldn't go to extreme lengths to hide the fact that they are tracking you, and to invent cr…

What about when it's "accept all" and "reject and subscribe for $1.99"?

Illusion of choice forced onto you by the tracking industry. Again, if consumers didn't care, the tracking industry wouldn't need to present users with this "choice".

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#387

Post by CTDOCodebases »

jhbadger wrote: post #261
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the maze thing is a strategy that mall operators use to trap shoppers in them and encourage them to spend more.

I'm sure that's why mall owners like it but Bradbury was advocating it from the angle of discovering cool alleys with little shops and restaurants like you can in an old chaotic city like Rome.

I think my particular experiences and shopping style have tainted my view.

I understand what you are talking about because the first time entering these spaces always holds a sense of wonder and discovery. Just like exploring the backstreets of some medieval city but since I generally shop alone and with purpose I am always frustrated by the process of exiting.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#388

Post by shawn_w »

paulorlando wrote: post #201

It seems quaint now, but it’s astonishing how much the fear of war (especially nuclear annihilation) affected mid-century fiction. In addition to "There Will Come Soft Rains" we have short stories like Stephen Vincent Benét’s "By the Waters of Babylon." In that story, society has been bombed back to the stone age. Even religion is a stone age recreation. Something like hot and cold running water seems like it must co…

Interestingly, By the Waters of Babylon was written in 1937, before WW2 and the development of atomic and nuclear weapons - events that obviously and understandably triggered that theme in later writing like Bradbury's.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#389

Post by CTDOCodebases »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #271
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the maze thing is a strategy that mall operators use to trap shoppers in them and encourage them to spend more.

I spent years of my childhood in Horton Plaza, as well as Seaport Village, Mission Valley Center, and Fashion Valley. I would say that we never felt “trapped” by Horton’s layout. There were plenty of clearly-marked exits around the perimeter. But the maze features were remarkable and unique for us. There were bridge walkways with an incline of half a level. There were asymmetrical stairways. The perimeter of stores w…

Thanks for the description. I think I'll jump down the rabbit hole and see it for myself.

Re: There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

#390

Post by TimTheTinker »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #342
TimTheTinker wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Whenever the "tens of millions killed by communism" number gets trotted out, it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism. Which is fine, but it means you need to go over to the west and count up all the people who died of preventable means (not to mention making per-capita adjustments) as well for a fair point of comparison. Every person who died of preventable ill…

> it's invariably considering everybody who died due to lack of assigned resources under communism

You mean, those who were forcibly starved by their government, those who were forcibly murdered and displaced by their government, and those who were put into forced labor "re-education" work camps by their government.

I'm not talking about the baseline of human problems and suffering that is everywhere -- that's not communism's fault. Communism is responsible for the large increase in death rate following a country's fall to it, and especially for the murders it commits (literally shooting, hanging, decapitating, working to death in gulags, etc., as well as imprisoning and persecuting dissidents and mass theft of peoples' property leading to mass poverty).

The vast power communist leaders hold always corrupts them and turns them into monsters.

> go over to the west and count up all the people who died of preventable means

> Death by capitalism.

You might as well say that everyone in a family who had a preventable death experienced "death by family". Or that everyone with an employer who had a preventable death experienced "death by employer".

It's not other people's job to prevent a given person's misfortune.

> Every person who's ever died of complications of malnutrition while their country exports food

That's due to government corruption more than anything else. Government officials should be held accountable and prosecuted.

Post reply on HN