“August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” written by Ray Bradbury is an interesting short story which was written in the year 1950. The short story takes place in the year 2026, in Allendale, California. Where there is no in site and there is only one house that stand in the middle of the city because everything surrounding the house is in rune.This house in particular is a smart house, where there is a machines that makes you breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The house is also self cleaning and has a builtin system that is like us in modern day Alexa, google home, and apple dot.
The smart house starts they day with an alarm telling you the time and date, and everything throughout the house is based on time. There is a given time to every thing at seven o’clock breakfast is ready with fresh food made by a machine. By eight o’clock the house tells you that you will be late and that you need to leave. and as time goes on there are mechanical mice that clean the house the kitchen cleans the dishes its self. everything in this house is self preserving, where when one thing is done like breakfast there is a protocol that the house automatically follows making sure everything is being taken care of by its self with no need to press a button or even lift a finger it already knows what to do.
What makes this story interesting is there is are no humans, there once was but are no more because of a nuclear war and radiation. the only reason to make this assumption is because in the story it is said “The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places.” and then goes on to say”Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here,as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball,and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down” which indicates that there was some sort of explosion that lead to this making these 5 silhouettes on the west face of the house.
The house has a sensing system maybe through voice which makes it know who is on the front door or around the house. An example is when the house is able to know that the dog is at the door and can open it fro him to come into the house. While if it were any other animal the house would not have opened the door.
When reading this short story by Ray Bradbury it reminded me of the movie the smart house which was made in the year 1999. The difference is that the movie came with a robot and the house everything is built in to it so there is no need for a robot. Both however have the same idea when it comes to the smart house.
