August 4, 2026: "There Will Come Soft Rains"

[Techwright]

(Note: The short story mentioned has the potential to generate some political talk.  This posting is not an invitation to bring political talk into the discussion in violation of the forum rules.  Keep it classy.  Thank you!)

 

As I write this, most of the world has already crossed over to the date February 4, 2025.  We here on the North American east coast will mark the date soon.  This puts us exactly a year and a half from August 4, 2026.   If you're wondering why I bring up that date, it is the iconic date in Ray Bradbury's popular 5-page short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" (later incorporated into The Martian Chronicles).  If you've not read it, check the link.  It shouldn't take long to read it.  You now have a year and a half to prepare.  😉 

 

Sci-Fi, whether for fun or a more serious consideration, occasionally gives us dates to look forward to, then to compare what the writer(s) created against the reality:  1984, Back To The Future II, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and any number of forward-looking magazines from 1930s to the 1960s all predicting the year 2000, to name a few.  So what does Bradbury, in this short story published 75 years ago (a lifetime!), get right?

 

• Voice clocks/calendars - though more common for bedside clocks and clocks for the blind, we do now have talking clocks, as well as devices with hourly and calendar reminders, such as the story's clock calling out the breakfast hour and important events, though I've yet to hear of a modern talking clock being used in that fashion.
• The Internet of Things (IOT) - Bradbury describes multiple devices that have programmable, automated functionality.  While we do not have the mechanical elements of this in place, we do have the programmable elements, and the interconnection of devices.
• Autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners - Think "Roomba".  Bradbury's versions appear as electronic mice that store in the wall, They also collectively have the ability to move heavy objects, and to smell decay.  Last I knew, Roomba could not do either.
• Automated/timed lawn sprinklers - We've had mechanical sprinklers for decades now, but the ones described are in the ground and scheduled to a specific time.
• Home A.I. - Bradbury predicted home A.I. in function simiar to our modern Alexa and how it could read poetry and other works or interact with things like the blinds of a home.  We actually have "smart" blinds  under the IOT that Alexa and devices like it can be programmed to open/close on demand.  It's not really average suburbia yet, like Bradbury implies, but it does exist.
• Voice-activated Home locks and security - Bradbury's version even recognizes the ailing family dog's voice and lets it in.  While ours does exist  it's again, still more of a luxury thing.
• Video Walls - The nursery of Bradbury's future home has glass covered walls that play childrens' video content.  I actually thought for a moment that Bradbury had predicted liquid crystal displays as there's a reference to the show characters "cavorting in crystal substance", but I now believe this is just an alternate way of referring to the glass surface.  So close.
• Smart Beds - Bradbury's house has timed, self-heating beds for comfort in a cooler night.  Modern IOT beds can do this, but also handle a variety of other adjustments, learning what best helps the sleeper.
• Off-the-grid power (implied) - While not specifically mentioned, the "soft rains" home is functioning while literally everything else around it has been turned to ash, meaning there's no functioning power grid.  This implies a localized power source like the modern Powerwall, the Tesla home battery and solar paneled roof system that can run the home independent of the grid.

 

There's likely some details I missed.  Really, though, even if he interprets a few advances in terms of equipment from 1950, this is an extraordinary insight into what a child born in 1950 could expect in 2026...hopefully without the nuclear results.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

...cheerful stuff...

 

So I had a quick surf through sci-fi movies that were set in the next few years.  If you need cheering up, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Children Of Men, though it is a damn fine bit of filmmaking: and the Giorgio Moroder cut of Metropolis is set in 2027. (So even if that turns out to be a dystopia, we get a Freddy Mercury/Adam Ant/Pat Benatar soundtrack. Groovy.)

 

There is one very odd/funny parallel though.

Spike Jonze made a rather good little flick called Her set this year, about a nerdy creative slowly falling in love with his AI assistant... played by Scarlett Johansson.

Siri was already around when that flick was made, so it's not a major tech leap.

 

But fast forward a few years,and one Sam Altman wants a female voice for OpenAI's assistant Sky. And it sounded eerily like ScarJo.

They swore it wasn't ScarJo. Couldn't be ScarJo. Was in no way voicecloned from ScarJo or matched on waveforms. 

Eventually, they said it was absolutely definitely a different actress, who lives in Canada, and no you can't talk to her.

(Haven't heard that one since I was in middle school.)

And they took it down. But I'm still not sure they've learned that lesson.

Edited February 4 by ThaOGDreamWeaver