Sensor-Based Electronic Art: August 2014

While reading this story I imagined a comparison of the house being what are smart phones are today. The house manages time, schedule, and uniqueness but on a larger scale. When the house decides to read the host a random poem, i imagine my phone could find a random song on pandora i would like. However, if i find my phone breaking down or "dying" it may seem like the end of the world to me but since technology is much stronger in the year 2026 its very apocalyptic. Humans tend to depend on technology because we are driven by convince due to how fast pace our lives are nowadays. We have so much to think about with non stop advancing technology that its impossible to keep a lot of things in your head. The house kind of scares me because i feel like the host could get so used to it that its almost as if the house is living through the house.

There Will Come Soft Rains : Reading Response & Sensor Walk Images

Compare and contrast your daily interaction with technology with those of the story. Use examples from both your life and the story. Generally what is your attitude towards your/our dependence and integration with everyday technology.

Ray Bradbury's short story, There Will Come Soft Rains, was not exactly a story to which I could relate literally. My home is not live, and capable of taking care of itself. I depend on my home and it depends on me. The house in Bradbury's short story was quite independent, until it ran out of water. That is something quite intriguing, that water was what kept it from dying to that point--if I remember correctly. Personally, I like to imagine that everything that exists has its own sort of life energy, even if its inanimate. In terms of interacting with technology, I feel that my laptop, my cell phone, and my Nintendo 3DS can be considered as some of my very best friends. They are more reliable than a lot of humans I interact with after all. I depend on the three, and my interaction with them gives them life. Without me, they wouldn't have their purposes and wouldn't have the same energy vibes they emit. Several people think it dangerous to be linked to technology so closely, but I believe it is a necessity with the advancing times. As long as everyone practices balance between technology and appreciating the natural environment.

Sensor Walk Images

Reading response for "There Will Come Soft Rains"

The reading was super creepy. It made me think about how dependent we are becoming on technology and how that can alternatively be helpful or harmful to us. For instance, the story seemed very alienating. There was just too much technology and because the house didn't seem to realize that there were no humans to cater towards, it all seemed so pointless. Why have all these advantageous and helpful technological devices when they are all just going to waste? And yet, at the same time, the technology did seem like it could be very helpful. For instance, the house recognized that there was fire and it did everything it could to protect itself and warn those who may have lived there. While I feel like certain aspects of the story seemed a little contrived/unrealistic (who would really want mechanical mice cleaning up their living room?), I felt like it did relate to current parts of our world. It made me think about how we're always connected to the Internet and have trouble being without our phones or even an outlet and I wonder how this dependency will affect us in the long run.

Soft Rains Reflection

It seemed like this story took the idea of how mankind has been becoming increasingly dependent on technology for many aspects of our lives, and brought it to a whole new level of overwhelming dependence in an apocalyptic environment.

A lot of the technologies referenced in the story seemed like plausible extensions of what we already depend on in real life, such as appliances cooking in the kitchen and electronic generated alarms, but they became extended in a way that the technologies operated self-sufficiently (without humans initiating the actions).

This already occurs, not in such an extreme extent, when we pre-program devices to do something. For instance, setting an alarm, setting a TV to sleep at a certain time, setting a microwave to heat for a certain length of time, etc. They are self-sufficient after being programmed, which essentially was probably how that "smart house" was initially created in the story.

The content of the story seemed like a reference to an idealized house that was programmed to execute all necessary or desired tasks at certain times, which turned into sort of a dystopian sort of environment. Ultimately it seemed as if it could have been that the technology was the demise of humankind and of itself.

Generally I feel like technologies are extremely useful and helpful when executing tasks in our daily lives, but the whole artificial intelligence part, where the technologies "make decisions" on its own based on factors is a little disconcerting. Even though that's basically what all of programming and technology comes down to, not in such literal terms of "making decisions," but for instance the "if then" methodology with programming and that sort of thing. So I'm not sure, I have mixed feelings.

Ray Bradbury "There Will Come Soft Rains" Response

Thankfully, my daily interaction with technology isn’t as annoying as the interactions in the story. I think it would suck to have constant verbal alerts in a robotic voice going off all over the house. I think one of the main differences is we can choose when we want to actively use technology, such as logging on the computer or taking out your phone, while the house is just yelling the time at you every 15 minutes. However, I do like to set alarms on my phone, and it has a similar effect. For example, I have an alarm to call my mom at a certain time every week, and the house has a notification to tell people it’s time to rush to school and work. We also do have sensors such as fire alarms that alert in a panicked way (thankfully not a robot voice) to alert when there are fires. Our interactions with technology are usually not so humanized as the story is implying, such as when it selects a poem to read to the past resident of the house. Technology right now is not really seen as a viable companionship source. But hey, maybe we’ll be at that point and find that in vogue in 2026. They’re already making therapy robots, such as the cute seal robot seen below, that visits hospitals and interacts with the patients.

Reading, Why didn't the house feed the dog?

I find some people dependence on technology to be sad. People depend on their smart phones to do to many common tasks that they could do themselves. Leaving them lost and hopeless when the phone is taken away. How hard is it to add, or remember land marks and directions, will it come to the point that we will forget how to write because we will be typing instead? I have had a dumb for a while, a phone that only receives calls and text messages. I like being disconnected from all of that gadgetry that seems to take so much time out of your life. In the story gadgets and technology is heartless, as in the removal and death of the dog, why wasn't the house programmed to feed the dog? As in the story the house and technology continued onward after the people were killed. Now when someone dies their Facebook page continues on living. Facebook sends you a notification that its their birthday, but they are dead. In my daily life I depend on technology for many things, electricity, internet, vehicles. Just cooking a meal depends on technology, getting groceries, food storage.

Reading Response

The reading had an interesting pace to which we were reading. It was quite an eerie way to think about technology being such an influence upon our lives. It made me think of my own life and how I do have a strong dependence on technology. In many ways my needs for technology were the same for those of the story. I need my phone on a daily basis. It is the only way I can talk to people around me who do not live in Gainesville. But the more I thought about my dependence and this story the more I got a little worried. I wait by my phone for a little notification to come up. My body is tuned to react to the notification vibration. I wake up to the same alarm from my phone every morning, I check some blogs to wake up, and then I check the weather, I check the time before I go to school, I check the bus location before I get on the bus. I'm not sure if I would be able to go a day without it. The reading was alarming because it alarmed me; counting down the time with every paragraph. The story did have a bit more technology then I think I have in my apartment but the fact that this growing want for convenience, makes society less reliant on themselves and giving these tasks we would think as trivial to something else. It is something to worry about as time continues and technology pushes on to no stopping point.