21st century

"2100" redirects here. For the documentary, see Earth 2100. For other uses, see 21st century (disambiguation).
For a timeline of 21st-century events, see Timeline of modern history.
Millennium: 3rd millennium
Centuries:
Decades: 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s 2040s
2050s 2060s 2070s 2080s 2090s
Categories: Births – Deaths
Establishments – Disestablishments

The 21st century is the current century of the Anno Domini era or the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on January 1, 2001, and will end on December 31, 2100.[1][2] It is the first century of the 3rd millennium. It is distinct from the time span known as the 2000s, which began on January 1, 2000 and will end on December 31, 2099.

Transitions and changes

Shanghai becomes a symbol of the recent economic boom of China.

The first years of the 21st century have thus far been marked by the rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism, mistrust in government, deepening global concern over terrorism and an increase in the power of private enterprise.[3][4][5] The long term effects of increased globalization are not known, but there are many who are concerned about its implications.[6] The Arab Spring of the early 2010s led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world.[7] The Digital Revolution which began around the 1980s also continues into the present.[8] The Millennials (born c. 1981-2000) having been born before the turn of the century give way to the rise of Generation Y & Generation Z in Western countries.[9]

In contemporary history, the 21st century essentially began in 1991 (the end of Short Twentieth Century) with the United States as the sole superpower in the absence of the Soviet Union, while China began its rise to becoming a superpower and the BRICS countries aim to create more balance in the global political and economic spectrum.[10][11][12]

The completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 marks the continual rise of Life Sciences, which makes mankind's long-held dreams, such as curing cancer, more realistic.[13] By the 2010s gene therapy, first performed somatically in late 1990 and heritably in 1996, showed promise but remains an experimental and emerging technology.

Assistive reproductive technology developed in the 1980s such as polar body biopsy and preimplantation genetic diagnosis has allowed for the selection of genetic traits, and along with the advent of ultrasound has increased the number of boys and decreased the number of girls in many countries, most notably in China and India but also in other Asian and eastern Europe countries.[14] This began in the late 1980s in China and India and after the fall of communism in the Balkans and Caucasus regions, concurrent with both the advent of capitalism in those countries and the widespread availability of reproductive technology.[14]

While digital telecommunications technology became widely used by most of the world, concerns about stress from the overuse of mobile phones, the Internet and related technologies remains controversial.[15]

By 2013 about 80% of the world's population used mobile phones.[16] An estimated 33% owned personal computers in 2010,[17] and 46% used the Internet by 2016, compared to about 1% in 1996.[18]

The distribution of modern technology is not equal - in 2012 it was estimated that 1.5 billion people, or about 20% of the world's population still lacked access to electric power, with many more having only intermittent or poor access.[19]

The International Energy Agency estimates that 83% of the global population has access to electricity as of 2013 with the percentage projected to increase to 88% by 2030.[20][21]

Population

Pronunciation

There is a debate among experts and the general public on how to pronounce specific years of the 21st century in English. Regarding this, academics suggested that since former years such as 1805 and 1905 were commonly pronounced as "eighteen oh" or "nineteen oh" five, the year 2005 should naturally have been pronounced as "twenty oh-five".[23] A less common variation would have been "twenty nought-five". Generally, the early years of the 21st century were pronounced as "two-thousand (and) five", with a change taking place in 2010, where pronunciations often shift between the early-year standard of "two-thousand and ten" and the common approach used in the late 20th-century of "twenty-ten".

The Vancouver Olympics, which took place in 2010, was being officially referred to by Vancouver 2010 as "the twenty-ten Olympics". The latest timeframes for change are usually placed at 2020.[23]

According to The Stanley Kubrick Archives, in the press release for his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, film director Stanley Kubrick included specific instructions for journalists to refer to the movie as "two thousand and one" instead of the commonplace pronunciation of "twenty-oh-one". Kubrick said he did this in the hope that if the film became popular, it would influence the pronunciation of that year.[24]

Politics and wars

Protesters try to stop members of the G8 from attending the summit during the 27th G8 summit in Genoa, Italy by burning vehicles on the main route to the summit.

Genocide still remains a problem in this century with the concern of the war in Darfur and the growing concern in Sri Lanka. Low estimates on the deaths in Darfur stand around 200,000 deaths with 2.5 million in displacement, there has been much outcry against the perpetrators, the Sudanese government, and the very weak international response. Also controversies from past genocides remain commonplace in the minds of victims and average people alike.

In 2009, Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States.

New countries and territorial changes

South Sudan gained its independence on July 9, 2011.
Kosovo declared independence on February 17, 2008.

Some territories have gained independence during the 21st century. This is a list of sovereign states that have gained independence in the 21st century and have been recognized by the UN.

These territories have declared independence and secured relative autonomy but they have only been recognized by some UN member states:

These territories were annexed from a sovereign country, the action being recognized by some UN member states:

Science and technology

Space exploration

Physics

Mathematics

Medicine

Storage and media

Social technology

Society

As the century began, the generations which had experienced the crises of the mid and late 20th century (the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War) as adults, were retiring from leadership positions and public life. Taking their places were members of the postwar "Boom" generations, whose formative experiences were the social upheavals (and, in the Western world, relative prosperity) of the 1960s and 1970s.

AIDS which emerged in the 1980s continued to spread yet more treatment of AIDS made the disease less of a deadly threat to those with access to treatment. A cure was still not found in the '00s despite expectations.

Same-sex marriage has slowly become more accepted, and has become legal in some countries. In 2001 the Netherlands became the first nation in the world to legalize this type of marriage. The 2000s decade saw significant change surrounding this social issue and the change has continued into the 2010s.

By 2001 most Western countries had removed the remaining racial language in their laws.

The early 21st century was marked by the Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began in December 2010. The results of these demonstrations have been mixed in outcome.

Civil unrest

Linguistic diversity

As of 2009, SIL Ethnologue catalogued 6,909 living human languages.[31] The exact number of known living languages will vary from 5,000 to 10,000, depending generally on the precision of one's definition of "language", and in particular on how one classifies dialects.

Estimates vary depending on many factors but the general consensus is that there are between 6000 and 7000 languages currently spoken, and that between 50-90% of those will have become extinct by the year 2100.[32] The top 20 languages spoken by more than 50 million speakers each, are spoken by 50% of the world's population, whereas many of the other languages are spoken by small communities, most of them with fewer than 10,000 speakers.[32]

Red hair gene

The Oxford Hair Foundation has predicted that people with the red hair gene will be either extremely rare or extinct by the year 2100. The University of Rochester Medical Center's David Pearce claims that people with the red hair gene constitute about 4 percent of 6.4 billion people in the world and therefore disputes the claim.[33]

Disasters

Natural disasters

The tsunami striking Ao Nang in Thailand on December 26, 2004.

2000s

2010s

The eye of Hurricane Irene as viewed from the International Space Station on August 24, 2011

Man-made disasters

Economics and industry

Sports

At the start of the 21st century sports were very popular. The IOC's Modern Olympic Games was the most viewed sporting event. Association football is the most popular sport worldwide with the FIFA World Cup the most viewed football event. Other sports such as rugby, cricket, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, tennis, and golf were popular globally. In cricket the emergence of the Twenty20 format as well as the creation of the Indian Premier League led to changes in the nature of the sport. American swimmer Michael Phelps won an Olympic record setting 8 Gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

International tournaments

Modern Olympic Games

Association Football

Athletics

Aquatics

Cricket

Cycling

Rugby Union

Tennis (Men)

Tennis (Women)

Motorsport

Golf

Entertainment

Entertainment during the 21st century had evolved from the same types of entertainment which emerged around the middle of the 20th century. Sports, films, music, TV series' and books remained popular into the early 21st century but new forms of entertainment including social networking and internet accessed videos became popular. Video games had emerged from a childhood pastime in the 20th century to an fully grown adult pastime by the beginning of the 21st century. The most popular mediums of entertainment in the first decade at least were via televisions, the internet, CDs, DVDs and paper. Digital information begins to complete its succession over analog information and storage techniques.

Mark Zuckerberg co-created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room.

Film/film creation

Music

A. R. Rahman, an Indian composer became the first ever from the sub-continent to have won double Oscars for his Original score and soundtrack in 2009.

Social networking

Issues and concerns

There are several points-of-view pertaining to the following items, all of which should be considered accordingly.

Issues that have been frequently discussed and debated so far in this century include:

The United Nations lists global issues on its agenda and lists a set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to attempt to address some of these issues.

Astronomical events

List of the long central solar eclipses

Other phenomena

See also

References

  1. "The 21st Century and the 3rd Millennium When Did They Begin?". United States Naval Observatory. Retrieved June 7, 2013.
  2. "When and where did the new Millennium officially start, and why?". Royal Observatory Greenwich
  3. "Majority of Americans distrust the government". Reuters. April 19, 2010. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  4. David A. Lake. "Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century" (PDF). quote.ucsd.edu. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  5. "Working with Private Industry | Research Pages | The Stimson Center | Pragmatic Steps for Global Security". www.stimson.org. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  6. http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/GIM_globalization.pdf
  7. Fisher, Marc (2011-12-15). "Arab Spring yields different outcomes in Bahrain, Egypt and Libya". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  8. Satell, Greg. "Why The Digital Revolution Is Really Just Getting Started". Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  9. "Contrasting Generation Y and Z". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  10. Flows, Capital. "Why The U.S. Remains The World's Unchallenged Superpower". Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  11. "Bric tries to shift power balance". BBC. 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  12. "China: the Emerging Superpower". fas.org. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
  13. Wheeler, David A.; Wang, Linghua (July 2013). "From human genome to cancer genome: The first decade". Genome Research 23 (7): 1054–1062. doi:10.1101/gr.157602.113. ISSN 1088-9051. PMC 3698498. PMID 23817046.
  14. 1 2 "Sex Imbalances at Birth: Current trends, consequences and policy implications" (PDF). UNFPA Asia and the Pacific Regional Office. August 2012. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  15. "Workplace trends: Technology increases workplace stress". Office World News. 1999.
  16. "The growth of mobile". Techi.com. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  17. "It's a PC world: Global computer ownership will continue to rise in 2010". The Economist. December 29, 2009. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
  18. "Internet Users". InternetLiveStats.com. March 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
  19. Statoil. "StatoilVoice: How Microgrids Could Bring Electricity To 1.5 Billion People". Forbes.
  20. "Access to Electricity". International Energy Agency. 2016. Retrieved 2016-03-29.
  21. "When measuring energy poverty, the best and latest data come from the IEA". International Energy Agency. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  22. "World Population". U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base. December 2013. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  23. 1 2 "Login".
  24. TASCHEN. "The Stanley Kubrick Archives". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  25. "Estimated casualties in Iraq". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  26. O'Neil, John; Onishi, Norimitsu (October 15, 2006). "US confirms nuclear claim". New York Times. Archived from the original on October 30, 2006. Retrieved October 16, 2006.
  27. Grolier- the new book of knowledge, section "E"
  28. "NASA News Conference: Evidence of Liquid Water on Today’s Mars.". NASA. 28 September 2015.
  29. "Higgs boson-like particle discovery claimed at LHC". BBC News. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  30. "Total mobile subscribers top 1.8 billion". MobileTracker Cell Phone News and Reviews. May 18, 2005. Archived from the original on January 19, 2008. Retrieved December 31, 2008.
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  32. 1 2 Roell, Craig. Battle of Coleto. Handbook of Texas.
  33. "Will rare redheads be extinct by 2100?". The Seattle Times. 9 May 2005.
  34. Bodeen, Christopher (August 8, 2010). "Asia flooding plunges millions into misery". The Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 4, 2010. Retrieved August 8, 2010.
  35. Masood, Salman and Adam B. Ellick. Floods in Pakistan Kill at Least 700. NYTimes.
  36. "UN voices Pakistan flood fears as death toll soars". BBC. July 31, 2010. Retrieved July 31, 2010.
  37. Khan, Ismail (July 30, 2010). "400 Killed in Flooding in Pakistan, Officials Say". The New York Times. Retrieved July 30, 2010.
  38. "Thousands trapped by Pakistan floods; 900 dead". Retrieved 6 October 2014.
  39. "Deaths From Pakistan Floods May Reach 3,000, Rescue Service Official Says". Bloomberg. 31 July 2010. Retrieved 6 October 2014.
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  45. "Oil spill full of methane, adding new concerns". msnbc. June 18, 2010. Archived from the original on June 20, 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2010.
  46. "Document Shows BP Estimates Spill up to 100,000 Bpd". ABC News. June 20, 2010. Archived from the original on June 24, 2010. Retrieved June 20, 2010.
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  49. "World population projected to reach 7 billion in 2011". CNN. August 12, 2009.

Centuries and millennia

External links

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