21st century

(20th century - 21st century - 22nd century - other centuries)

The century known as the twenty-first century comprises the years 2001-2100. This is different from the century known as the twenty hundreds, which comprises the years 2000-2099. These were preceded by centuries known as the twentieth century (1901-2000) and the nineteen hundreds (1900-1999), respectively.

These two systems are often confused, because "century" means a hundred-year period, but the two systems start their centuries on different years. Use of the former system is more common among historians ("the U.S. civil war was in the nineteenth century"). Use of the latter is more common among the general public ("the U.S. civil war was in the eighteen hundreds").

The twenty-first century is the first century of the third millennium (2001-3000). The twenty hundreds is the first century of a millennium which could be called the two thousands (2000-2999). But the first decade of this century (2000-2009) is also often called that.

The increasing prevalence of global communications and encounters with other calendars (Islamic calendar, Chinese calendar, Persian calendar, Hebrew calendar) suggest that the terms "21st century" and "the third millennium" has a substantial cultural bias. Some futurists suggest simply abandoning the idea of "centuries", setting the start date back to the beginning of human urbanization in the 4th millennium BC, making this the Seventh Millennium. Within that, some suggest also adopting a cyclic time[?] model based on global climate change, which they view as the macro-equivalent of the annual seasons.

Important developments, events, achievements

• Wars and Politics
  • September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
  • 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan
  • 2003 invasion of Iraq

• Science and Technology
  • 2002 Mars Odyssey arrives in orbit around Mars.
  • 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster February 1
  • 2003 Dolly the sheep dies prematurely February 14
  • 2003 Severe acute respiratory syndrome spreads around the globe.

Influential people in Politics as of 2003 (In alphabetical order)

• Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority
• Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia[?], effective government leader
• Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations
• Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority
• Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda leader, in hiding (or possibly dead)
• Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
• Jacques Chirac, President of France
• Saddam Hussein, deposed President of Iraq
• Colin Powell, United States Secretary of State
• Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, President of the Russian Federation
• Gerhard Schröder, German Bundeskanzler (chancellor)
• Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel

Influential People in Technology as of 2003

• Hans Blix, Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector
• Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation
• Linus Torvalds, Creator of Linux

Influential People in Science as of 2003

• Dr. Ronald Atlas[?], biologist, science ethicist, US bioterror advisor

Influential People in Mathematics as of 2003

Influential People in Art as of 2003

• Mathew Barney[?]

Predictions for the 21st century as of 2003 Please note that these predictions are controversial, and disputed by many other observers: they are listed here to show some late 20th century futurists' predictions of the events of the 21st century so that they may be compared with real events as they happen.

• 2003: The last birth year of the Millennial Generation. (William Strauss[?] and Neil Howe[?], 1991)
• 2005: Third turning (Unraveling, which began with 1984's "Morning in America") over; Fourth turning (Crisis era) begins (William Strauss[?] and Neil Howe[?], 1997)
• 2006: Linux becomes the dominant operating system on the desktop (it became the dominant server OS at the end of the 20th century).
• 2006: Chinese passes English as the most prevalent language on the Internet
• 2009: majority of text is created by continuous speech recognition (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)
• 2010: robots appear with the processing power of lizard brains, capable of autonomously cleaning houses (predicted by Hans Moravec[?] 1998)
• 2010: The audio CD is no longer the format of first choice
• 2012: the dawn or the decline of the whole human civilization (predicted by the Mayans centuries ago; 2012 is the year the Mayan calendar rolls over)
• 2014: Fish farming, or aquaculture, provides a majority of seafood in the United States
• 2019: computers pass limited forms of the Turing test; people begin to have relationships with computers; visual, auditory and tactile virtual reality enables people to realistically interact with physically distant partners; automatically driving systems installed in most roads (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)
• 2020: Peak year of the "Crisis of 2020" (Strauss and Howe, 1991)
• 2027: Crisis of 2020 over; First Turning (New High) begins (Strauss and Howe, 1997)
• 2029: Human - computer communication via direct neural connections[?]; humans don't work in production, agriculture and transport anymore; computers claim to be conscious and these claims are generally accepted (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)
• 2030: robots with monkey-like thinking capabilities, able to imitate tasks and solve simple problems, appear (predicted by Hans Moravec[?] 1998)
• 2040: robots comparable in ability to humans appear; soon thereafter, they surpass humans in most abilities (predicted by Hans Movavec[?] 1998)
• 2047: High over; Awakening begins (Strauss and Howe, 1997)
• 2049[?]: Nanotechnology produces food without agriculture; nanobot swarms create tactile-realistic projections of people and objects (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)
• 2050[?]: the biggest war the world has ever seen is over, and rebuilding is ongoing (predicted by John Archibald Wheeler[?] in 2002)
• 2069[?]: Awakening over; Unraveling begins (Strauss and Howe, 1997)
• 2099: Humans and computers merge; most human consciousnesses don't employ carbon based hardware anymore (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)

Other things

• 2061: next return of Comet Halley.

Decades and Years