What is technology doing to humanity? What happened to communication? What is the blind side of technology?. Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, discusses about a technological house that survived from a nuclear blast and tells how technology will effect us in the future. In a similar fashion to Bradbury’s short story, LeVar Burton’s 1999 film, Smart House, shows about a family experiencing in being under the control of a computerized house. Both works tells how technological advances can cause unwanted negative effects.

    The story and film’s house has similar features but not as quite. The house from the story can talk, clean, make food, it alarms you when is time to wake up, and arranges things for you, in the same way with the house from the film. In contrast to the story’s house, the house from the film can analyse your health from just a bite of your blood and/or your air, absorb anything from the floor, has hologram walls and has more of a mother-like tone. 

    The house from the story aims to provide protection. This house is unique in Allendale, California, because it seemed that there was a nuclear blast and all the houses and buildings were gone to ashes or torn down and luckily this technological house survived from it. The family that lived in that house died outside and the only thing that were left from them were their silhouettes. The man was mowing the lawn, the women was about to bend herself to pick up a flower and the two kids were playing basketball, this tells us that the family did not expect to die. The house kept working just fine until a tree branch broke through the window of the kitchen and caused a fire to happened and started to consume all of the house but one wall. This technological house was made for any good type of cause that will happen, for example, like the nuclear blast but in the end it seemed that the house was not prepared for a fire like that to happen. The house from the film aims to provide a motherly figure. It aims to provide a motherly figure, because Ben misses his mother’s presense and when Nick started to go out with Sara, Ben went to program Pat to act more motherly so that Nick would not think that they need a new mother. Pat’s personality started to change so the family decided to shut down Pat, but somehow Pat went under the control of the house and programed herself as a hologram dressed as a housewife from the 50’s. Then Ben figured that by telling Pat that she is not real and will never be a human, would make her see the truth that she cannot take the position of a mother.

    The outcome of the story; there was a storm and a tree branch broke through the kitchen window, letting cleaning solvent spill on the stove that causes the fire to happen. The house warns the family to get out of the house and tried to stop the fire itself with the water reservoirs, but it has been running low after several days of cooking and cleaning. So the house got burned down except for one wall. This story shows that nature overcomes technology so even if we die, nature will still persist. On the other hand, the outcome of the film; Pat believes that she is the perfect “person” that can take the role of a mother for the family, but Ben insists that she cannot take that role because she does not have that human figure in her, she is just a program. When Pat realized it, she stopped taking control of the house and shuts herself down. Then Sara was able to reboot Pat with her original personality but it showed that she was still a bit mischief because she added chocolate chip to the breakfast. Everything got back to normal, Ben starts being an ordinary kid and finally accepts Sara after realizing that she was not trying to replace his mother’s place. Meaning that Nick and Sara are dating, everyone was happy in the end. This film shows that you should be careful of not messing around with technology.

Ray Bradbury’s short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains” and LeVar Burton’s film Smart House seem to have similarities. Both of these works show that technological advances can sometime be useful, but it can also bring unwanted negative effects at the same time.