In Ray Bradbury’s 1950 short story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” we witness the perseverance of an automated smart-home after its human occupants were obliterated by a nuclear bomb. The house continues to clean, cook and care for its/their nonexistent residents until it is destroyed by a fire. Not only does the short story foresee the ever-present possibility of humanity’s complete self-destruction at the hands of nuclear warfare, but it also, more presciently, demonstrates the potential for a cybernetic ecosystem which continues to operate beyond the purview of humans. Therefore, on the one hand, the story decentres the human within the circuits of communication technologies—reflecting what is now called actor-network theory. However, on the other hand, it also presents the absurdity of an anthropocentric world in the absence of the humans it was designed to serve. In other words, it simultaneously portrays cybernetic communication as ecological and agential in nature, while also criticising human’s use of technology as unconsidered and myopic.

The irony of the latter is elucidated throughout the story as the house vocalises itself through a series of (perhaps kitschy) rhymes: “Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!”; “run, run, eight-one!”; “Nine-fifteen, […] time to clean” (244). Here we see what could be called automated affect, a phenomenon which arises often in contemporary society. Technologies are not only designed to be functional and useful, but also to evoke positive emotions within humans. For example, self-serve checkouts at supermarkets thank customers for shopping, smartphones politely ask to be charged as their batteries deplete, etc. It is this automated affect which makes the home feel like a subject. However, without humans around the be affected by the rhymes and quips, it becomes increasingly apparent that the house would not communicate to itself in this manner. In fact, the house already does communicate with itself via software and circuity outside the view of humans. Ironically, it is the house’s ability to mimic human speech which least reveals its ecological nature.

As the story continues, and we move beyond the home’s automated speech patterns, the house is described in increasingly bodily terms which decentre human subjectivity. Amid the destructive fire, Bradbury writes,

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air.” (248)

The anthropomorphised house shudders, cringes and quivers and its communicative circuitry becomes exposed as the walls blaze. Interestingly, during the fire the house—via its receptive and interconnected technology—attempts to maintain homeostasis: unsuccessfully regulating the home’s temperature with sprinklers, faucets, and mechanical snakes spouting a “clear cold venom of green froth” (248). However, the house’s attempts to impose order through its cybernetic negative feedback loops are no match against the fire’s positive feedback loop which allows it to grow exponentially. The house screams, “Help, help! Fire! Run, run!” (248), both as a warning for its nonexistent occupants and perhaps as a declaration of its own fear. But rather than elucidate the house’s potential nonhuman subjectivity, its affective quips actually obfuscate the home’s truely ecological nature. While the house is designed to mimetically reflect “Nature” with its “tables folded like great butterflies” and its “nursery floor […] woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow” (246), its not the house’s aesthetic fidelity to Nature or its ability to oralise pre-written code which confirms its status as an ecological subject. Instead, the house is an ecological subject despite this design. The automated affect in the form of the rhymes and visual style—which is portrayed as an absurdity with no humans to serve—masks the house’s reality. Rather than its ability to speak, it is instead the home’s receptivity to change via cybernetic technology which makes it ecological and agential.

Therefore, Bradbury’s short story demonstrates my notion of the sonder-World-Wide-Web: a reconsideration of the sonderweb which views the interconnection of inorganic information communication technologies (ICTs) as equally real and valid as organic ecosystems. As explained in an earlier chapter, the term thoughtsilk helps us understand the materiality of thought not as a transient occurrence, but as permanently shaping the world. In other words, thought leaves a permanent mark on the objects it considers and relates to. The sonder-World-Wide-Web does not need such an elegant neologism to describe the materiality of relationality in cyberspace; instead, the word hyperlink already articulates this. Hyperlinks reify and solidify interconnections, making them unambiguously visible and unlike their evasive thoughtsilk counterpart. The smart-house in “There Will Come Soft Rains” is completely constituted by reified interrelation in the form of water pipes, circuitry, robotics and the algorithmic software which allows each element to interact with the others. While the conclusion of the short story—the house’s destruction (except for a single wall) after a fire—can be read as Bradbury portraying not only the extinction of humans but also of their perverse creations vis-à-vis true “Nature,” I insist upon the opposite. The perishing of the house does not mean that cybernetics will die with humans. Rather, the house’s ability to die is what confirms its status as an ecological subject. Thus, ICTs are as real as the flora and fauna which occupy the Earth, and the sonder-World-Wide-Web helps us recognise that cyberspace has achieved full integration with every other worldly subject.


works cited

Bradbury, Ray. “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The Martian Chronicles, Bantam Books, 1979, pp. 242-249.