What will humans do in 2,000 years, when we've gained complete control over our environment via geoengineering? My guess is that they'll create historical reenactment planets, terraforming alien worlds to reenact great moments in Earth history.
I talked about this idea last week on the futurist web series Fourcast, where four people get together to discuss short range, medium range, and long range predictions. You can watch the whole show here - it's fun but informative, and the predictions from ABC's Dan Patterson and our hosts Tom Merritt and Scott Johnson were all pretty mind-bendy.
So what do I think the most awesome historical reenactment planet would be? One that recreates present-day Earth, of course. If you look at most historical reenactment groups, their focus tends to be on recreating wars. (Even the friendly folk of the Society for Creative Anachronism have stick fights and an annual war.) And I think the early twenty-first century would be perfect entertainment fodder, what with Cold War era skirmishing on the decline and random acts of terrorism making everyday life so frightening. Remember, the pain you experience in the present will be amusing diversion for future generations. Wait, did that sound too cynical?
Watch the whole show via TWiT TV.
Images are concept art from Nintendo's Spectrobes.