There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

Post by closeparen » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

ern_ave wrote: post #111

WillAdams wrote: post #98

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff. Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for…

> What will be the first device to bottle up AI and other modern technologies in a package and become widely in-demand One problem I see is that corporations insist on collecting and reselling our data. As a result, a lot of people are reticent to get much automation. They seem to accept it with TVs, but other devices - it's just too much of an intrusion. I say "a lot of people" but I don't know how many people it is…

Post by floren » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

AlphaGeekZulu wrote: post #39

"Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn." Bradbury describes the fully automated smart home, but its technology does obviously not extend into the garden exterior. Funny - that in reality robot vacuum cleaners and robot mowers were actually among the first gadgets in automated smart homes. I perceive this as a flaw in the story. The author had a very prophetic vision of technology in the future, and with…

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

mlhpdx wrote: post #131

physPop wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN crowd is not representative of the world at large. consumers don't care. cost and convenience are primary motivators.

As far as I can tell, many “regular” people do care and alter buying decisions based on privacy concerns. They use words like “creepy” instead of technical ones, but the underlying discomfort is the same.

Post by BowBun » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

baggy_trough wrote: post #152

mrloopex wrote: post #110

Born in 1968 I missed “duck and cover” but rode the wave of Reagan brinkmanship with my skater friends until 1990, watching all the broadcast TV PSAs and songs and art about nuclear war. It was real. It pervaded daily life: the notion that two old white men were having a pissing contest with every human as disposable bargaining chips. And as always, 25% of the US population cheered for purification of the planet beca…

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Post by nekiwo » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

twotwotwo wrote: post #28

Okay, a stretch for HN, but: singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada named an album released last year Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (meaning There Will Come Soft Rains). She talked about how she and her brother read The Martian Chronicles as kids and she remembered the Sara Teasdale poem quoted at the end. She said she composed the songs at a difficult time in her life and, I guess, something about that image in the story (and t…