21st century

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

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In calendars based on the Christian Era or Common Era, such as the Gregorian calendar, the 21st century is the current century, lasting from 2001-2100. The 21st century is the first century of the 3rd millennium (2001 - 3000).

Table of contents

1 Important developments, events, achievements 2 Influential people in politics as of 2004 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 Astronomical events 9 Astronomical predictions 10 Decades and years 11 External links

Important developments, events, achievements

• Wars, battles and terrorism
  • September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks
  • 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
  • 12 October 2002 Bali bombing
  • 2003 invasion of Iraq
  • 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks
• Politics
  • 2004 EU Enlargement: 10 countries join
  • Final draft of the European Constitution is accepted

• 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.
  • 2004 Mars rovers discover evidence of likely flowing water on Mars.
  • 2004 Cassini-Huygens probe arrives at Saturn.

Influential people in politics as of 2004

(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
• Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• Hans Blix, Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector
• George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
• Jacques Chirac, President of France
• Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II- Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and various other Commonwealth Realms.
• Saddam Hussein, deposed President of Iraq, currently held by US forces
• Hamid Karzai, interim president of the Afghan Transitional Administration
• John Kerry, Democratic candidate for Presidency of the United States of America
• 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
• William H. Gates III, Chairman and Chief Architect of Microsoft

Influential people in technology as of 2003

• Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation
• Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux
• Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer

Influential people in science as of 2003

Influential people in mathematics as of 2003

• Grigori Perelman

Influential people in art as of 2003

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: 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
• 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 do not 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)
• 2038: Ctime overflow: The number of seconds since January 1, 1970 will no longer be storable as a 32-bit signed integer. Some expect this will be a second Y2K.
• 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) India celebrates 100 years of independence 1947
• 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)
• 2067: Canada celebrates 200 years of independence 1867
• 2069: Awakening over; Unraveling begins (Strauss and Howe, 1997)
• 2099: Humans and computers merge; most human consciousnesses do not employ carbon based hardware anymore (predicted by Ray Kurzweil 1999)

See also: Timeline of the future in forecasts

Astronomical events

• Tuesday, June 8, 2004 - Transit of Venus occurs after 122 years

Astronomical predictions

• Wednesday, June 6, 2012 - Transit of Venus to occur 2nd time this century
• 2061: next return of Comet Halley.
• Friday, November 10, 2084 - Transit of Earth as seen from Mars

Decades and years

1990s	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999
2000s	2000	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	2101	2102	2103	2104	2105	2106	2107	2108	2109

External links

• Long Bets Foundation to improve long-term thinking
• Long Now Long-term cultural institution