I thought: I’ve got my website running WordPress 2.5.1. I’ve got an Eclipse/Aptana installation that works well for code editing. Photoshop CS3 for image noodling. A Sony VAIO laptop running Vista Home Premium that automatically updates itself. I’ve got Windows FolderShare set up to mirror all of my important files so I don’t need to worry about manual backups.

All I need to do from now on is just keep updating the software, and I never, ever, ever need to configure anything again. Windows will update itself. WordPress will evolve incrementally. New virus definitions will arrive. Oh, I might need to swap out hardware a few times, but otherwise I’ve got everything in my computer setup exactly the way I want it. I’m done! I’m set! No more tinkering, no more Googling for solutions.

Well, I’m almost set. I still need to fix the meta tags on WordPress. I’ve got to try to find a better FTP module for Eclipse, because the built-in one sucks rocks. I need to upgrade to Vista Ultimate so I can get Windows Remote Desktop and stop paying $20 every month to GoToMyPC. I need to find a way to have FolderShare mirror my Firefox profiles without making me close my browser five times a session…

It’s not over. It’s never over, and it never will be.

Somehow they’ve managed to do it. Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Sony, IBM, Google — all the dozens of companies large and small who make the hardware and software products I use — they’ve managed to put me in a state of permanent technological dissatisfaction. I’m not satisfied with my computing environment. I’m not satisfied with my website. I’m not satisfied with the tools I use. I need to upgrade something, I need to fix something, I need to improve something. I’m going to sit there on my deathbed bummed out as hell because, well, sure I’m about to die, but I’m about to die and I still haven’t gotten my Firefox profiles to sync properly.

Some lefties would have you believe that this dissatisfaction is just a product of corporate lust. See, I fell into the trap myself in the last paragraph. As if we would all live peaceful, communal, nonacquisitive existences if Coke and Pepsi would stop shoving their advertising in our collective face.

But it ain’t true. This is the human condition. That’s the hand we’ve been dealt. We’re permanently dissatisfied.

We Americans are accustomed to thinking about our history as one continual struggle for improvement (however misguided it may be at times). We pride ourselves on the fact that every generation of American citizens has had more luxuries, amenities, and opportunities than the one before it, and the next generation will have it even better than us. The reason you’re sitting on a cushy hypoallergenic stainproof La-Z-Boy recliner is because your grandpa wasn’t satisfied with his wooden rocking chair. You’re not totally satisfied with your La-Z-Boy either — there’s always something you can do to improve it — and that’s why your great-grandkids are going to be floating on inflatable programmable portable instantly customizable space lounge chairs. And they’re going to have problems with those too…

This technological restlessness didn’t start with America; not remotely. How far back does it go? The late, great Arthur C. Clarke nailed it in his late, great novel 2001. Early on in the book, we follow a group of primitive apemen led by one Moonwatcher. They’re starving, they’re dwindling, they’re skateboarding on the precipice of Total Extinction without a helmet or kneepads. That’s when the unnamed alien species delivers the Monolith — you know, that tall black slab you remember from the movie. As Clarke describes it, the Monolith is essentially a Machine That Pisses You Off. Suddenly Moonwatcher’s got these visions in his head of a group of primitive apemen lying around all sleek, fat, and comfortable. And he thinks: why don’t I have that? What am I doing wrong? What do I need to do to get that?

Now here I am, a million years later. I’m sleek and fat and comfortable. I sit in a cushy chair all day with a little metal machine on my lap that lets me communicate with anyone in the world. I’ve got cabinets stuffed full of food, I’ve got a security system that keeps the bad guys out, I’ve got a house so insulated from the weather that I rode out last nights’ thunderstorms without a hitch. And yet I am irritated as fucking hell that I can’t get my Firefox profiles to sync.

Lo, my children’s children, I promise you this: we’ll get those Firefox profiles to sync before you arrive. By the time you get here, you’ll be set, and you’ll never, ever, ever have to tinker with anything again. Really. Cross my heart.

This can be a very tricky enterprise. If you’re wrong, you’ll inevitably look foolish and backwards and stuffed full with 21st century prejudices. If you’re right, you’ll be long dead anyway, and you’ll probably still look foolish to your contemporaries.

I think part of the lack of respect that the science fiction genre receives from the mainstream has to do with this: a lot of people don’t understand how science fiction looks to the future. Or perhaps more importantly, they don’t understand how science fiction doesn’t try to predict the future. (And of course, please keep in mind that I’m generalizing here.)

To appreciate the distinction, you need to know a little about chaos theory. (Mind you, a little is really all I know about it.) In particular, the subset of chaos theory known as the Butterfly Effect.

Most people have heard of the Butterfly Effect, which says that a single butterfly flapping its wings could eventually, through a long series of causes and effects, cause a tornado to form. Or not form. Or alter course. If you could go back in time and nudge the butterfly two centimeters to the left, you might drastically change the course of that tornado. It seems like something so inconsequential as the airspeed velocity of an insect shouldn’t be able to have such a powerful effect. And yet chaos theory has been rigorously tested and validated by scientists. The Butterfly Effect is real.

You can also apply this to the events of history. Ray Bradbury famously demonstrated this in his story “A Sound of Thunder.” Someone sneezes in a Florida church in October of 2000; a couple dozen people catch cold and spread it to their neighbors in a black working-class community; a couple hundred Democrats stay home from the polls on Election Day; George W. Bush wins the election instead of Al Gore. The world is a drastically different place.

In other words: Whether John McCain wears a blue or a red tie tomorrow could make the difference between the human race living in a virtual paradise or the human race perishing in a post-apocalyptic hellhole three thousand years from now. (Please choose wisely, Senator.)

So when you’re trying to make predictions about life a thousand years from now, you’re going to make mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are based on flimsy evidence and/or shoddy reasoning, but sometimes they’re just the result of the Butterfly Effect. Unpredictable.

Case in point: the Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which predicted that we’d be walking by Hilton hotels and Howard Johnson’s restaurants on orbital spaceports by now. Carefully researched, carefully thought-out, and completely wrong. You can’t fault Mr. Clarke or Mr. Kubrick for not predicting the economic factors that caused America to indefinitely postpone space colonization. You can’t fault them for not predicting the demolition of the Soviet Union. Their vision was sound, and I’m willing to bet it will be reality someday. It’s just that Franklin D. Roosevelt happened to be wearing a red tie on one particular day in 1927 instead of a blue one.

Since we can never factor in the trajectory of every butterfly on the face of the Earth, science fiction can never truly predict the future with any kind of scientific precision. We can’t populate our novels with the kind of historically accurate details that, say, E. L. Doctorow can put in his.

And because of that, futuristic science fiction becomes a sort of intellectual puzzle. A thought experiment. Writers have to make lots of assumptions that they don’t necessarily believe in, just to get at the core subject they’re trying to explore. And as a result, critics of the genre say that science fiction is an unrealistic or a childish endeavor.

Which it isn’t. Whew.