"There Will Come Soft Rains"

I believe that the technologies in “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury can have both a positive effect and a negative effect on people and life. Technologies are meant to help increase society, and to improve life from day to day. Technology is meant to make everything easier, organized, and simpler.

 In the story, the voice clock is a technology that has a positive effect on human life. It helps people keep on schedule and be organized. Also there are many other positive pieces of technology present in the story. There is the breakfast stove, the aluminum scrap wedge, the tiny cleaning robot mice, automatic garden sprinklers, automatic windows/garage, voice activated doors, automatic bathtub, and a pre-warmed bed. While all these technologies’ help people and can make life simpler they can also have a negative effect.

These technologies can keep people from becoming educated in certain areas because they have a machine or piece of technology to do it for them.  For example “In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs Sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.” This “breakfast stove” made it so people didn’t have to learn how to cook. This means that all the education that goes along with cooking such as math was also not present. Also many of these technologies created a set schedule and allowed for no change. For example, in the story it says “Five o’clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.” An automated bath tub filling at the same time everyday makes it so that every day is the same and there’s no room for any change. IF the people changed their routine then the tub would fill and nobody would be there to take a tub.

                In conclusion, Technologies can be positive and improve people and their lives but also have their negative aspect. We need to be aware of the difference between technologies that are helping or that are worsening us as people.