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There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

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

#391

Post by inigyou »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #390
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

wait so you're literally arguing "every death in communism is communism's fault but no death in capitalism is capitalism's fault"

like, that's literally the argument you're making. You're not just implying it, you're saying it.

seems like a pretty bad faith argument, IMHO.

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

#392

Post by XorNot »

mathgeek wrote: post #382
XorNot wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes and both those things aren't what I cook pasta in.

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

#393

Post by nalthis »

billiam wrote: post #259
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? We are the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, according to the experts: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/timeline/

IIRC, the bulletin of atomic scientists stopped tying the clock to nuclear war decades ago, and its recent moves towards midnight have more to do with climate change and AI than nuclear weapons.

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

#394

Post by wat10000 »

XorNot wrote: post #258
troyvit wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the most unrealistic part of this story is how all the IoT automation continues to work in the absence of the Internet. It's actually one way this story about the apocalypse is more hopeful than the present day. We don't need the internet to make most of the things in that story work, but in our timeline we'd add it anyway to get and sell those good analytics.

Except that isn't really why it happened: iot being Internet tied is because it's much, much easier to get devices to work when you control at least one side of the server with skilled professionals rather then your average home user. And no one has really come up with an alternative: home assistant is good, but it's not for the non-techy. I will squarely blame IPv4 for some of this: NAT has meant that the key applic…

HomeKit works great as long as you have devices that support it. The only thing you need a server for is if you want to be able to control things while you're away from home. Control/notification on the LAN is entirely local. Setup for non-technical users is easier, too. You scan a code through a standardized flow, rather than downloading Yet Another App and creating Yet Another Account you'll forget the password to.

Being tied to the internet happens because manufacturers want to be able to watch your usage, sell you ads, and make you buy more stuff from them when they decided your existing hardware is "too old" and shouldn't be supported anymore.

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

#395

Post by mrloopex »

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…

Lucifer has fallen!

“Canticle” blew my 14 year old mind. Really sad ending but the mutations really got under my skin.

Didn’t Plato call sad music a “false construction” when outlining justice?

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

#396

Post by jltsiren »

dbspin wrote: post #256
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…

Beautifully articulated, but I have to disagree with you on nuclear power. We're close to the point where renewables and battery tech are a solution to all our power needs. Remaining obstacles being primarily political / geopolitical. Meanwhile, after 70 years we're still no closer to a safe long term solution for nuclear waste. Every new and untested nuclear reactor design falls into the same pro-innovation bias of…

Incidentally, Finland just took a key step today towards issuing an operating permit for the Onkalo repository. After today, the permit is mostly matter of bureaucracy, and the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel could start by the end of the year.

The issues with renewables and nuclear waste are similar. The general solutions have been known for decades, but progress has been slow, as people have been unwilling to commit to them.

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

#398

Post by singleshot_ »

jhbadger wrote: post #280
rob74 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one of the usual failures of science fiction: most authors imagine technological progress, but don't also predict what societal changes it might bring. So this family had a quaint picture-book suburban 1950s life, just with robots. Same as Asimov's Detective Baley smoked a pipe and had a traditional 1950s marriage with a stay-at-home wife - just with robots...

They don't even predict all the technological changes. I love how in William Gibson's Neuromancer they have VR, true AI, and even fancy orbital resorts, but not mobile phones!

If you can climb inside the sensorium of a hot assassin and feel it in your mind when she pinches her nipple, what is the point of an iPhone?

The people in that world moved pretty far beyond cellphones in a couple hundred years, and that’s okay. I’m sure you’ve noticed there aren’t a lot of phone booths around anymore…

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

#399

Post by jhbadger »

singleshot_ wrote: post #398
jhbadger wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't even predict all the technological changes. I love how in William Gibson's Neuromancer they have VR, true AI, and even fancy orbital resorts, but not mobile phones!

If you can climb inside the sensorium of a hot assassin and feel it in your mind when she pinches her nipple, what is the point of an iPhone? The people in that world moved pretty far beyond cellphones in a couple hundred years, and that’s okay. I’m sure you’ve noticed there aren’t a lot of phone booths around anymore…

True, but in the Neuromancer universe they still have public pay phones and at one point the main AI keeps ringing the phones to get the main character to answer as there doesn't seem to be any other way for it to contact someone when they aren't jacked in to cyberspace.

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

#400

Post by GlickWick »

inigyou wrote: post #374
GlickWick wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess has always been the delicate balance of perception. Nukes are (rightfully) perceived to be beyond the basic destruction we've come to expect of war. They're a tool for annihilation. If you use them offensively the rest of the world will become so afraid of you that they'll nuke you so you can't nuke them. Israel isn't strong enough to entertain the idea that they could survive this.

I really don't think that country is worried about its international perception right now.

They will if it means they stop existing
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