In recent years, technology has become a more advanced tool in the everyday lives of humanity. New and improved technology is being used all across the globe to teach students, save lives, and to make our lives as humans easier overall. The technology in Ray Bradbury’s short stories could be taken as good or bad, depending on which aspects of the stories are taken into focus. Technology in Bradbury’s stories is nearly completely autonomous which makes life a lot easier for the owner, however, there is also the side in which is abused in “The Veldt” and overused in “The Pedestrian”.
Today’s reality however, is that new gadgets like phones, computers, and robotics can all greatly assist the human race without overuse. Admittedly, in the wrong hands, technology has the power to be a destructive force or be a major detriment to society. However, it’s positive uses often outweigh the bad side, as all of us are not terrible people all the time. New inventions and improvements in consumer technology are helping to improve the lives of people all across the globe.
While particular types of technology, especially in the weapons area, are a reason to worry about technological advances, the everyday uses for technology more than make up for it. The human race in recent years has had more and more open use of technology, and people are owning more devices in their homes. According to information graphed by the United States Energy Information Administration, over ninety percent of homes in the United States of America contain at least one television set as of the year 2009.
On top of that, surveys taken show that seventy-five percent of homes in the United States contain at least one computer as of 2009. Every year this survey was taken, the numbers recorded only went up, and it was more common for households to own more than one television and computer. This reality was foreseen in a short story known as “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, in which the narrator comments on how everybody is inside their homes every night watching television shows, on top of the fact that he has never seen another person outside at night when he takes his walks.
In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time. ” Increasing amounts of people are gaining access to these devices and people are using them even more often as the years pass and improvements are made. In the recent past, technology has rapidly become a more prevalent feature in every walk of life and is even used to do jobs for us. Smartphones are one example of a relatively new technology that has become a popular device for a large amount of people.
Apple® today announced it has sold more than 13 million new iPhone® 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, a new record, just three days after launch. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be available in more than 40 additional countries beginning October 9 including Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain and Taiwan. The new iPhones will be available in over 130 countries by the end of the year”(Apple Inc. , 2016). The Apple iPhone is one of many inventions to occur in the last few years, along with the inventions of smart watches from companies like Apple and Samsung, and the Google Glass that are all making useful tools more portable than ever.
There have been more household related appliances like automated vacuum cleaners and dishwashers that help or do their respective jobs for us. In Ray Bradbury’s “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”, a house has been automated to do the jobs of cleaning, cooking, and starting baths and showers for the owner, even though the house does not fully realize that it’s owners are not in the home. “In the kitchen, the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from it’s warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned oast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffee, and two cool glasses of milk. ”
As technology advances, it becomes able to perform more tasks that we normally do on a daily basis, making that less work we as humans do. On top of technology becoming more able to more jobs for us, technology is also becoming more able to operate without us. This truth is shown by devices such as Honda’s Asimo project, an autonomous humanoid robot, capable of walking and climbing stairs without human assistance.
While not quite artificial intelligence which would truly allow for technology to be autonomous, it is an advance. Technology that operates independently of humans is also written about in “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury. “As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the car at all”. The car told of in this line seemingly operates without any human intervention. There is a great possibility that technology will go farther than simply walking on it’s own like the Asimo, and be able to become more intelligent and effective without human assistance.
Technology in the last few decades has advanced to the point of helping the human race on a daily basis and will only continue to advance. On top of that, it is also becoming more available to the everyday person and even does some of the jobs that we would normally have to do by hand, for us. Although some believe that one day technology will advance to the point where it becomes dangerous to the health and lives of the human race, these examples of the safety and assistance new devices cause nearly, if not completely overrule the threat that some fear from technology.
