21st century





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"
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
        o September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
        o 2001 U.S. Attack on Afghanistan
        o 2003 invasion of Iraq

   * Science and Technology
        o 2002 Mars Odyssey arrives in orbit around Mars.
        o 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster February 1
        o 2003 Dolly the sheep dies prematurely February 14
        o 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, in hiding (or possibly dead)
   * Colin Powell, United States Secretary of State
   * Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, President of the Russian Federation
   * Gerhard Schršder, 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: 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 dawn of 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 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.