21st century

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

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As a means of recording the passage of time, the 21st Century is the current century, lasting from 2001-2100. The twenty-first century is the first century of the third millennium (2001 - 3000).

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" have 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.

Table of contents

1 Important developments, events, achievements 2 Influential people in politics as of 2003 3 Influential people in technology as of 2003 4 Influential people in science as of 2003 5 Influential people in mathematics as of 2003 6 Influential people in art as of 2003 7 Predictions for the 21st century as of 2003 8 Other things 9 Decades and years

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 (SARS) 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, de facto 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, currently held by US forces
• 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)
• 2004: Cyprus, Czech republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia join the European Union (EU).
• 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: GNU/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
• 2007: Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union (EU).
• 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 great cycle of the Maya 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 Moravec 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

2000s		2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
2010s	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019
2020s	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	2027	2028	2029
2030s	2030	2031	2032	2033	2034	2035	2036	2037	2038	2039
2040s	2040	2041	2042	2043	2044	2045	2046	2047	2048	2049
2050s	2050	2051	2052	2053	2054	2055	2056	2057	2058	2059
2060s	2060	2061	2062	2063	2064	2065	2066	2067	2068	2069
2070s	2070	2071	2072	2073	2074	2075	2076	2077	2078	2079
2080s	2080	2081	2082	2083	2084	2085	2086	2087	2088	2089
2090s	2090	2091	2092	2093	2094	2095	2096	2097	2098	2099
2100s	2100