The Non-Determinism of Nature

The story of Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains depicts a world in the aftermath of the apocalypse from the perspective of a smart house. While it’s original inhabitants are surely dead, the house does not know that and continues to operate; cooking, cleaning, and running the house. It’s almost eerie how the house keeps running and operating, calling out to it’s long dead owners.

Whats interesting is how Bradbury suggests that technology can be nature. Saying “If mankind perished utterly… Would scarcely know that we were gone.” While the context this quote refers to nature and natural things, the quote also can be applied to the house as it keeps operating, unaware that the people are all gone.

I can see the merit to that idea. I believe that technology will never become intelligent, see the Chinese Room Argument from John Searle. And it is undeniable that computers use natural things such as electricity and metals. But I think that technology lacks one thing to really make it part of nature. Reproduction and change.

First off its obvious that the house “dies” at the end in the fire, never to be fixed up. And with that tragic event there will never be any new houses. Even though the radio still exists and works it will never be able to fix the house. Change is a little more complicated since the house can tell the changes in time and respond accordingly. What I mean is change over one’s lifetime. That house was going to keep doing the same thing every day until it was destroyed. It would not have been able to do anything different that would have enabled it to live longer and was also doomed from never being able to change.

Technology is great and all, but it isn’t exactly a part of nature. Know nature better can make better technology, but better technology will never be natural.