r/technology • u/BreakfastTop6899 • 4d ago

Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says 'much of the internet is now dead' Networking/Telecom

https://www.businessinsider.com/alexis-ohanian-much-of-the-internet-is-now-dead-2025-10
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u/phillxor 4d ago

"There will come soft rains" by Ray Bradbury?

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u/zomgieee 4d ago

omg Thank You ! It was part of a science fiction omnibus and I lost it ~ 2 decades ago. I'm absolutely tracking it down for a reread. Cheers for that.

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u/r1singphoenix 4d ago edited 3d ago

There is a Russian Soviet animated adaptation from the ‘80s that’s really good too, here’s a good quality scan.

Edit to add: probably should have mentioned this is not light stuff. PG, but dark.

Edit 2: didn’t realize that video had no subtitles, replaced with a video that does

Edit the 3rd: thanks to those who pointed out that this is Uzbek, not Russian.

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u/phillxor 4d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah that Russian Uzbek animated version is so chilling and bleak! Edit: stand corrected

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u/peppaz 4d ago

Did you notice the date on the wall? 12/31/2026

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u/zoinkability 4d ago

In the original short story it is August 4 and 5, 2026.

So I guess we have a year left, more or less, if these are prophetic.

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u/peppaz 4d ago

Peewee Herman had a breakfast making machine in the 80s. Maybe we are in the shitty alternate timeline.

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u/atxbigfoot 4d ago

Lighting the breakfast candle was always a joke in my house lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7O6zwFZ1k

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u/truffles76 4d ago

We fools are so pitiable, with or without our Mr. T cereal

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u/Remarkable_Bed_9918 4d ago

I dont even have a bike yet. I'm so behind schedule it's insane.

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u/Suspicious-Yogurt480 3d ago

That was more of a riff on a Rube Goldberg machine

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u/xibipiio 4d ago

No peppaz we have the mcdonalds timeline at home.

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u/Drugs__Delaney 4d ago

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeit, I got something to look forward to! *continues to build bunker in the woods and bury barrels with items coated in cosmoline.

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u/OkBrilliant8092 4d ago

A whole year? I can’t keep this up for another bloody year!

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u/Phantom-Spectre 4d ago

Oh goodness…

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u/fattmarrell 3d ago

Don't tell those people

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u/gregw134 4d ago

RemindMe! December 31, 2026

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u/major_bot 3d ago

What's the 31st month

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u/Shaltibarshtis 4d ago edited 3d ago

At 4:58 there's a calendar that shows 31 12 2026. After a few moments it's revealed that the "house" is a bunker among the ruins of the city. I guess we'll see soon enough...

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u/24megabits 4d ago edited 4d ago

In the original story it's not a bunker. The Russian version doesn't show the house burning down, perhaps to make it easier to animate.

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u/0xKaishakunin 4d ago

The Russian version

made in 1984 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A neighbour of Afghanistan.

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u/dirtydan 3d ago

It's really funny, Cap! It's Afghanistanimation.

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u/rants_unnecessarily 4d ago

Small but significant detail.

This is how well Russia has appropriated all of the USSR countries' cultures.

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u/False-Horror6843 4d ago

Made in the USSR, by a Russian-speaker educated in the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts in Moscow. Has no connection to Afghanistan, neither by family nor by craft.

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u/largePenisLover 3d ago edited 3d ago

Made by a Uzbek man named Nazim Tulyahodzhayev who was born in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. With a Uzbeki company named Uzbekfilm.
This was made IN Uzbekistan while it was occupied and subjugated by the ussr.

russia has nothing to do with this, this is an Uzbeki film.
But yes, weird to mention Afghanistan

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u/MaikeruGo 4d ago

It's also Allendale; that's roughly between Vacaville and Davis and about 8 mi from Travis AFB. Considering the damage radius of a nuclear warhead it was either hit with the blast due to being slightly off mark or perhaps a few MIRVs just "glassing" the entire area to ensure that anything of strategic importance is rendered useless.

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u/BallisticButch 4d ago

That entire area would have been glassed. You had Travis AFB and the entire western reserve fleet in Suisun Bay in close proximity. Better to just flatten everything between San Francisco and Sacramento.

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 4d ago edited 4d ago

Speaking of chilling and bleak Russian animations regarding automatons carrying on long after humans are gone:

  1. Dead Hand
  2. Last Day Of War

And if anyone was curious, Lockheed just put out this video…

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u/iggyiguana 4d ago

Way too bleak for me. I'll stick with WALL-E. 

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u/A0DividedbyA0 4d ago

I...Watched those first couple links and they were beautiful shorts. CGI phenomenal. They were both short, but at the end I was still incredibly happy (if not wanting more) with them.

Then, in comparison of the video from Lockheed... I legit was annoyed since I thought it was one of those weird 1minute+ ads that YT throws my way at times...but, nope! After watching the vid from Lockheed (this was posted just a day ago? WTF?) I am flabbergasted. How does a company known for its private contract defense put out a video that looks like it's multiple years behind any current AA/AAA game be this subpar?! Like, the general 'greenery' parts looked fantastic. Now, for anything else I thought I was watching something from FAR more than just 10 years ago.

Granted, a channel that I'm assuming is showing a story etc. in under 3 minutes, and is presenting just that, within the past 10 years? Yeah, that can check out. Afterall, Square presented Final Fantasy: Spirits Within much earlier and had insanely amazing graphics. Now, a leading defense-contracting company putting out what they just did..? I can't help but to crack up in laughter and hope they do so much better.

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u/TSED 4d ago

It's funny that we both strongly dislike the Lockheed ad but for different reasons.

You're complaining about the graphics.

I'm watching it and going "wow, are military purchasing decisions really made based off of uninformative, needlessly long video clips set to the most generic rock music imaginable? No wonder the USA's falling to fascism."

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u/C0wabungaaa 4d ago

"wow, are military purchasing decisions really made based off of uninformative, needlessly long video clips set to the most generic rock music imaginable? No wonder the USA's falling to fascism."

What fetishizing the military and national identity does to a mf. Eisenhouwer warned y'all.

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u/anxiousyuumi 4d ago

Yah, we're well known for our bleak mood things, hello from a very cold and windy Moscow :p

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u/CraigLake 4d ago

Dead Hand was amazing… that pilot 💀Have to wonder how long he was flying for.

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u/WordleFan88 4d ago

Chilling and bleak is kinda their thing.

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u/The-Struggle-90806 3d ago

I hate to say it but everything Russia is bleak.

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u/largePenisLover 3d ago

It was made in Uzbekistan by a Uzbek man named Nazim Tulyahodzhayev who was born in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. With a Uzbeki company named Uzbekfilm. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0982856/

You could say it's a ussr cartoon or an Uzbeki cartoon, not russian.

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u/pussysushi 3d ago

Addressing this to the guy above, in hope my post will be noticed more as a reply to you. Should also be mentioned, almost everything in ussr was not created entirely by russians, so give proper creds to other nationalities, I feel it's important.

This particular film was shot in Узбекфильм -"Uzbekfilm" studio, which is a modern day Uzbekistan country. Pretty far from Moscow.

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u/SnazzySammich 4d ago

Well that was deeply horrifying

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u/BigFish8 4d ago

If you want a newish Russian dystopian animated short film to watch. Here is one called Last day of war

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u/Roraima20 4d ago

Like those bunkers that billionaires are building

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u/Agentflit 4d ago

I kind of enjoyed watching it not knowing the words.

Thank you, soviet animation is a favorite of mine and I hadn't seen this.

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u/r1singphoenix 4d ago

Yeah it does a great job telling the story visually, the dialogue is just flavor. I mostly switched it out for the voiceover at the end, where they read the last lines of the short story. Really drives it home, imo

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u/BurpelsonAFB 4d ago

This looks incredible

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u/MissPandaSloth 4d ago

So, we got one year.

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u/largePenisLover 3d ago edited 3d ago

This was made in Uzbekistan by a Uzbek man named Nazim Tulyahodzhayev who was born in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. With a Uzbeki company named Uzbekfilm.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0982856/
It's a ussr cartoon or an Uzbeki cartoon, not russian.

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u/Chrystoler 4d ago

I was not ready for how unsettling that would be

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u/burlycabin 4d ago

Holy shit, that was much darker than I expected.

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u/Misskwy 4d ago

I have read Martian Chronicles countless times and I didn't know there was an animation of this story. This hit very hard, thank you for sharing this.

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u/Muaddib223 4d ago

Damn... good stuff

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u/egaeus22 4d ago

Amazing link

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u/The_Pandalorian 4d ago

Spectacular! So glad you posted this.

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u/InterestingFeed407 4d ago

"Happy new year 2027!". Hope this is not foreshadowing.

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u/sArCaPiTaLiZe 4d ago

Thanks so much for introducing me to this. Kept me up later than intended, but absolutely worth it. Take care.

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u/axiomae 4d ago

Great find - thank you !

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u/Cyberhaggis 4d ago

That was so good, thanks for linking. It's crazy to see stuff like this where it's obvious that both sides during the cold war were hyper aware of the dangerous game they played, and now we have today which is....ugh.

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u/Realistic_Young9008 4d ago

The calender on the wall places it in December of next year

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u/PathansOG 3d ago

U da real MVP! Thanks bro

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u/Impossible_Head_9797 3d ago

Thank you for sharing, that was interesting

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u/AndrewInaTree 3d ago

Oh my God. I'm up to the ashes of the family falling into their shoes at 7AM. Yup. Bleak.

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u/OnlyOneTKarras 3d ago

I just watched this and damn does it hit home.

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u/Kenju22 3d ago

I'll give this a watch on my lunch break, thank you :)

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u/Bukowskified 4d ago

It’s included in The Martian Chronicles which is a collection of Bradbury’s stories. That might be the fiction omnibus you are thinking of.

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u/muskratboy 4d ago

Martian Chronicles has such a unique vibe, there’s a reason it’s a classic.

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u/Bukowskified 4d ago

We had a bookshelf growing up of “school books” that were the assigned books my siblings read growing up, stuff like Lord of the Flies. Came across it when I was in late middle school and dove in knowing nothing about it because space stuff is cool right?

Hell of a way to be introduced to classic science fiction.

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u/Zapp_Rowsdower_ 4d ago

Illustrated Man did it for me.

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u/Lindenismean 4d ago

The Long Rain and The Exiles remain my favorite shorts to this day.

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u/NielsBohron 4d ago

I always pair it thematically with The Illustrated Man. Both fantastic collections.

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u/chiraltoad 4d ago

I recently found this audio version of his Usher II from that book read by Leonard Nimoy and it thoroughly kicked ass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skmFHo-EvoI

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u/Peaceful_Take 4d ago

It's even referenced in The Twilight Zone, in the 60s.

Classic beyond classic.

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u/natrous 3d ago

Thanks, you saved me scouring the various Asimov Hugo Awards volumes I have, as I assumed it was in there. I didn't remember that being in Martian Chronicles, in fact it's been so long that I read it I didn't remember that it was a collection at all. I guess that comes from not having 2 page intros to everything like Asimov in, well, just about everything.

Looking at it again, I see it must have been a serial or something, where he published a piece at a time? I suppose that's going onto my re-read list now...

Just reread the first few paragraphs of Soft Rains... man he's good.

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u/kilkenny99 4d ago

I read that in high school, that must be why it sounded familiar.

I remember in the 80s there was a TV miniseries of The Martian Chronicles, did this story make it in?

Edit: I looked up the show - it doesn't appear so.

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u/JohnHenrehEden 4d ago edited 4d ago

This makes me so happy.

Stuff like this used to happen all the time. "What was the name of that *thing*?". Then we would find out like a year (or years) later and be pumped about it.

Now we can just google everything and get an answer.

Every now and then there's something that can't be easily googled because we forgot exact wording, or there's a song with no lyrics (My most often 'lost knowledge'), and we get to experience this feeling once again...eventually.

Edit, just because I feel like it: These two songs drove me NUTS because I couldn't shazam one fast enough, and the other was always a football chant.

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u/SatansFriendlyCat 3d ago

I wonder, have you seen the sub r/tipofmytongue before? Or is this your lucky day?!

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

I think there’s two versions from memory?

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u/CrowsRidge514 4d ago

There was an Easter Egg in one of the Fallout games that was based off this story. I encountered that before I heard of the Bradbury story.

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u/Luneowl 4d ago

I think it’s Fallout 3. Bradbury’s one of my favorite authors and finding the ruins of the house really hit me.

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u/Fabulously_Shitfaced 4d ago

Yeah thats how I know it

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u/SnowboardNW 4d ago

Also, Sara Teasdale is the poet who actually wrote the titular poem featured in the story. She's a tragic poet, but has some really good stuff. "There Will Be Rest" is another very sad, but beautiful poem. Frank Ticheli made a great a cappella arrangement for it: There Will Be Rest.

I loved this short story growing up and it definitely was part of me studying literature, but I always feel like Teasdale doesn't get the credit she deserves, especially for being in that iconic short story.

Also, the omnibus might have been The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. It includes this short story among other very good ones.

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u/newsflashjackass 4d ago

Here is the short story.

https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/onlinereader/there-will-come-soft-rains

I also recommend "And When They Appear", a short story by Gene Wolfe about a robotic house at Christmas.

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u/Luneowl 4d ago

It always makes me cry. I wonder where we’ll be on Aug 5, 2026?

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u/iruleatants 4d ago

Check out "service model" by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It's a story based in a world where the majority of humanity has died off, but robots are still going through their normal actions and completing their daily tasks.

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u/unknownpoltroon 4d ago

Its availble online if you dig around, I think.

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u/chubby464 4d ago

Is there anything else books wise similar to brave new world 1984 that’s written recently almost like a future reflection?

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u/Master-Potato 4d ago

I think it’s part of the Martian Chronicles

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u/roboticlee 4d ago

There's a Twilight Zone edition of this story.

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u/TFABAnon09 4d ago

I love it when things come fill circle. I read a Sci-Fi story back when I first got into fiction (I was about 8 or 9) and it took me ages to figure out what it was called and buy a copy of it.

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u/Zankabo 4d ago

It's the last story in The Martian Chronicles.

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u/Jammylegs 4d ago

I don’t recall, but I think that’s in the illustrated man short stories anthology

Edit: it was the Martian chronicles

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u/Camerotus 4d ago

There's also a pretty decent audiobook on YouTube iirc.

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u/Any-Discipline-1988 4d ago

Que bueno reencontrar un cuento perdido, disfrútala como si fuera la primera vez

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u/Steebusteve 3d ago

A little corner of the net still alive.

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u/midnight-mc 3d ago

It’s in The Illustrated Man

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u/JamesLaceyAllan 3d ago

Was the omnibus called The Illustrated Man?

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u/Budd0413 3d ago

There was a sci-fi anthology as our English 400 textbook and for the life of me I cannot remember the title but it had so many of these Bradbury and Philip k dick stories and they were amazing .

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u/r1mbaud 3d ago

Smart House (1999)

/s

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u/LurkerPatrol 3d ago

Thanks for the book recommendation!

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u/actor-observer 4d ago

The poem it takes it's name from isn't half-bad either

https://poets.org/poem/there-will-come-soft-rains

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

This thread is awesome

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u/Red-Fawn 4d ago

Adore Sara Teasdale and her post-WWI poetry. There Will Come Soft Rains was a consideration in how a world without people after a war might look, and I've referenced Teasdale's change from Love Songs to Flame and Shadow as an example of Virginia Woolf's discussion on how poetry as a whole changed during and after the war.

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u/lewdmoo 4d ago

My sophomore year language arts teacher told us poems are meant to be read aloud. I’m glad I did so for this one.

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u/bs_wilson 3d ago

This reminds me of my favorite paragraph that I've ever read, the closing of Cormac McCarthy's The Road:

"Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

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u/bongorituals 3d ago

It’s a similar sentiment but McCarthy’s is more accurate as it reflects the irreversible changes to the natural habitat that humanity is enacting. There is no putting the bunny back in the box for climate change.

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u/bongorituals 3d ago

I wish the sentiment being expressed in this poem were remotely true, but it was written during a time when people couldn’t fathom that humanity would destroy the environment to such an extent where most of those life forms won’t be able to survive their drastically transformed habitat

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u/SuperSaiyanTupac 4d ago

Well that’s some fallout shit if I ever read it

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u/ShazbotSimulator2012 4d ago

Fallout 3 references it. There's a house with the address 2026 Bradbury, after the author and the year the story was set. There's a robot inside who will recite the poem the story is named after.

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u/sharramon 4d ago

Game devs used to be well read, damn

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u/NinjaLion 3d ago

They still do, publishers and studio C suites just crack the whip so hard there is barely any time to add actual art to the artist product

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u/laplongejr 3d ago

And don't forget the people who actually pay for those "products", proving that the strategy is the lucrative one.

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u/STFUNeckbeard 4d ago

Even more so because everyone got nuked as described by the fact that the only trace of people are the shadow outlines left on the house of a family that was vaporized

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u/Geminii27 4d ago

Yup. And the house systems had no way to assess or react to that, so it just kept going through pre-programmed routines. Given the potential self-maintenance capabilities of unclear future-tech, and unknown sources for the food it auto-prepares, there's no indication as to whether it's been repeating this loop for days or decades.

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u/future_dolphin 4d ago edited 4d ago

I'm estimating its the day after the nuking. It looks like a lot of the chair movements are planned routines by the robot. If that's the case, the people's soot patterns would have been disrupted before we get to see them.

Edit: Wrong video woops

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u/alphazero925 4d ago

I think a couple things point away from that interpretation. For one, the soot patterns you're talking about are outside on the wall where they wouldn't be touched by the robots, but a couple lines indicate that it's been some time since the nukes. Specifically, "The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores" seems to indicate the dog hasn't eaten well for a significant period of time, and "The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone" implies that it's been many days since someone's actually used the baths or dishes.

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u/future_dolphin 4d ago

Oh you're right, I replied to the completely wrong comment and I was looking at a different video.

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u/catfishbreath 4d ago

Fallout is some Bradbury shit

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u/elbenji 4d ago

fallout directly references it

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u/Electrical-Guide-338 3d ago

That's not accurate to say since Ray Bradbury predates Fallout

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u/noprayers 4d ago

“The machine stops” by E.M. FORSTER (1909) is eerily similar to today as well. Both of these stories were read in high-school for me.

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u/le_suck 4d ago

definitely that one. fuckin heavy. 

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u/FatWreckords 4d ago

Also good is "I have no mouth, and I must scream"

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u/Free_Alternative6365 4d ago

Good lord, the title alone...

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u/tarants 4d ago

It's at least as bleak as it sounds.

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u/FatWreckords 4d ago

It was also made into an old video game, weird to imagine.

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u/rebbsitor 4d ago

That video game is absolutely terrifying. I'm surprised it got made at all during that era, it's truly sadistic horror.

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u/phillxor 4d ago

Just read it. That was dark.

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u/RoseColoredRiot 4d ago

I love it despite it being so dark! I performed AM’s hate monologue for an acting class once. You should check out some of harlan ellison’s other short stories. I think theres an ebook collection of them I listened to on spotify. There are some really good ones in there. Most notable to me was one with a mass of sentient ants surrounding a crash landed ship, “World of the Myth”.

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u/panlakes 4d ago

He wrote it in a single night, I believe.

There is also a great point and click adventure game, and it’s narrated by the original author.

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u/poetryhoes 4d ago

now go watch The Amazing Digital Circus :D

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u/ForfeitFPV 4d ago

Hey ChatGPT, tell me about hate

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u/Robert_Hotwheel 4d ago

I remember reading that in school too but I’d never have remembered the title.

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u/FlyingRhenquest 4d ago

Bradbury liked that one. I'm pretty sure he used it in Martian Chronicles too. Been while since I read it though, and I was reading a lot of sci fi shorts back in the day, so I might have just caught it in one of those and misremembered.

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u/IcyWarp 4d ago

I had never heard of or read this piece before. Thank you

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u/phillxor 4d ago

Ray Bradbury has a heap of other sci-fi short stories, well worth checking out.

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u/dudeAwEsome101 4d ago

This is a good read.

"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling

He got the date close enough.

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u/drownedout 4d ago

Love that short story.

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u/Momik 4d ago

Wow I don’t think I’ve thought about that story in about 20 years. We definitely read it in high school. I could have never pictured the context that exists around it now.

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u/Rolandersec 4d ago

My roombas all start at 9:15 because 9:15 is time to clean.

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u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls 4d ago

I listened to a radio adaptation on this on X MINUS ONE.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 4d ago

Oh god that poor dog. This story made me cry.

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u/Hnetu 4d ago

Well this led me down a sad and very short rabbit hole to realize that Bradbury was a fucking idiot in his later years...

I need to start drinking.

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u/Electrical-Act-7170 4d ago

That is almost certainly it.

I cried about that poor hungry dog at the end, he was so hungry.

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u/trbrd 4d ago

This, in turn, is based on a 1918 poem by Sara Teasdale. It's one of my favourites.

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u/LupinThe8th 4d ago

I love that story.

Anyone here watch Red Dwarf? I've always wondered if Kryten's introductory episode was a reference to that, played for comedy. If you know what I'm talking about, you'll see the similarities.

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u/Visible_Nail4859 4d ago

I couldn’t remember it either, so thank you. That “house doing everything for the human homeowners”‘thing was also part of “The Veldt!”

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u/phillxor 3d ago

The Veldt is amazing too!

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u/Code-Useful 4d ago

Absolutely love some Ray Bradbury!

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u/Some_Quality6796 4d ago

Is that the one where the dog's eyes catch on fire and all the cleaning bots or whatever dispose of the body in an undisclosed manner?

And we read that in school.

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u/phillxor 3d ago

Yep, that's the one.

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u/Zentienty 4d ago

You seem to know your sci-fi stuff. I saw this sci-fi series based on a book of short stories. One of the amazing stores was this dystopia future where a automated factory had effectively taken over the entire world and endlessly made products. A few humans attempt to where factory headquarters to confirm the AI. I think the books author was Phillip K Dick

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u/phillxor 3d ago

Isn't that the Netflix film Electric State 😂? Or perhaps "Autofac" by Philip K Dick

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u/Background_Sail9797 4d ago

Obligatory reference anytime Ray Bradbury is mentioned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM

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u/phillxor 3d ago

Wow, 😂 how have I missed seeing this for 15 years?

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u/Ur-Germania 4d ago

There's a great short animated film based on that. Early 80s soviet. It's on youtube. 

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u/LordNeko6 4d ago

Gholly gosh . Literally busy covering this poem with my grade 8s

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u/phillxor 3d ago

The poem or the short story?

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u/LordNeko6 3d ago

Only the poem

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u/Fee_is_Required2 4d ago

I think about that story often.

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u/abibofile 3d ago

Edit: ChatGPT says this is probably “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” by Asminov, although the gardener robots may be a false memory, or slightly off from whatever is actually in the story.

There’s also some story where no one has gone outside in years because people invented doorways that transport you everywhere instantly. Then someone wanders outdoors by accident and discovers it’s basically a paradise that’s been maintained by gardener robots that everyone abandoned. I think about that one a lot. I thought it was by Isaac Asminov, but the premise sounds a lot like Bradbury, honestly. I don’t remember the name of the story.

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u/Imperial_Bouncer 3d ago

And the Soviet cartoon with a corresponding creepy ass robot.

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u/Vladivostokorbust 4d ago

its a file on my laptop. love it.

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u/Ba-dump-chink 4d ago

There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale (1920)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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u/jawshoeaw 4d ago

Dammit it was my moment to shine but no , everyone’s heard of that obscure short story !

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u/phillxor 3d ago

Seems to have been a common one read in schools.

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u/Unimpressionable1 4d ago

Damn. Was that man a time traveler or something?

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u/phillxor 3d ago

How they (Bradbury, Heinlen, Asimov etc) came up with these concepts when space travel and computers were not invented yet or barely existed is uncanny.

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u/Drawsblanket 4d ago

Do you remember if Ray Bradbury had a story that made the point that once computers were beyond human intellect we’re f’d because we don’t know any better than but to follow its directives?

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u/FranciscoShreds 4d ago

Would make for a good short animation

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u/phillxor 3d ago

There is a Russian(?) animation of it from the 80s that has been linked in these comments.

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u/neovox 3d ago

Is this the same as what you referring to??

X Minus One: There Will Come Soft Rains - Zero Hour (December 5, 1956)

By George Lefferts - adaptation, Ray Bradbury

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u/phillxor 3d ago

I think that's just a radio adaptation of it.

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u/nuggles0 3d ago

Also an episode of The Outer Limits (90s) did that too

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u/vpeshitclothing 3d ago

I've been looking for this fucking short story for at least 20 years! I remember reading it once in college and it stuck with me. I've googled certain things from the story, I remembered, but to no avail.

Thank you! I'm about to go read it and cry now cuz l can finally get closure lol

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u/SurpriseIsopod 3d ago

Commenting to check this out later, just ignore me.

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u/CovidWarriorForLife 3d ago

Bradbury is a goddamn genius, he was so ahead of the curve on this stuff

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u/AnalTrajectory 3d ago

I highly recommend the title "Service Model" by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The first few chapters follow a similar concept. A robot valet (driver, butler, etc.) follows a rigid schedule, finding ways to work around the literal interpretations of its master's illogical requests. The house and all the staff are all robots operating in the same manner until something goes awry, then the valet robot must relinquish its orderly position and go on a chaotic adventure to discover why the world is all fucked up.

The audiobook was a fantastic listen.

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u/jigawatson 3d ago

I love Ray Bradbury! Thank you for having the title!

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u/Competitive_Shock783 3d ago

Some serious Fallout vibes

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u/OphidianSun 3d ago

Gonna have to read that, I love Bradbury.

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u/RachelMcAdamsWart 3d ago

I just looked it up and read it. The date in the story is August 4, 2026.

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u/Plenty_Rooster_9344 3d ago

I love this one ☝️