"There will come soft rains..."

I have read this short story before, sometime in middle school or perhaps early high school. I think it is a beautiful, haunting piece of literature and I enjoy Bradbury's work in general. In relation to this class, I think we were asked to read this because it asks the question:

"What is technology without humanity?" leading to the more general concern of "What is a creation without a creator?"

What is a transducer worth with no one to give input or no one to read the output? Like the house in the story; which is portrayed as both sympathetic (a personified object that "quivered at each sound" and experiences "paranoia," yet it is "senseless" and "useless") and creepy due to these same qualities (getting into the "uncanny valley" where something not human becomes too human). If left alone, what is an automated piece of technology worth? This is relevant because this class is based around direct human interaction with machines, and naturally relies upon this bond and will slide into questions of where the human ends and the machine begins. This weird little story ponders how when the human ends, the machines does not.*

"Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
if mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."

But does the technology we leave behind matter? Does it care? Of course not, yet we have to wonder. It's almost like we see ourselves as little gods, able to bring live into machines through our touch. And why shouldn't it feel that way?

I remember reading about a theory that stated that our normal perception of human brain evolution and the creation of tools was backwards: the larger, more complex brain didn't come first and create the tools. It made more sense that the tools came first, and created the larger, more complex brain. While I am not a natural history major, I am an artist who uses tools, and this is an intriguing idea. I don't think that tools make the "man," and do I do believe that the best tool you have is between your ears, but who is to say that the interaction between brains and the tools they use to survive and flourish don't create a new space between each other; a place ripe for innovation and creation?

As such, tools left behind retain some of that "energy." The bond between humanity and digital technology will define the next hundred years or so of human development, that's what I think; so long as we don't end up as ashy shadows like in Bradbury's eerie story. So... I hope this class can help me understand the nature of this connection more, and mine it to create engaging art pieces.

*A nuclear bomb ended the family, made terribly obvious by the highlighted passage on the first page. This took a lot more brainpower for me to figure out when I read this story as a teenager. At this point, the trope of "white picket fence family felled by a nuclear disaster" is so overused it's found in places as low as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. But I think it was more groundbreaking and frightening in Bradbury's time.