21st century

For other uses, see 21st century (disambiguation).

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Shanghai, China. Reflective of the Modern City-Scape of the 21st Century.

The 21st century is the current century in the Anno Domini or Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. It began on 1 January 2000 and will end on 31 December 2099. It is the first century of the 3rd millennium.

The rise of a global economy and Third World consumerism marked the beginning of the century, along with increased private enterprise and deepening concern over terrorism after the September 11 attacks in 2001.[1][2][3] The NATO intervention in Afghanistan and the United States-led coalition intervention in Iraq in the early 2000s, as well as the overthrow of several regimes during the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, led to mixed outcomes in the Arab world, resulting in several civil wars and political instability.[4] The 2020s saw an increase in wars across the world, as seen with conflicts such as the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.[5][6] The United States has remained the sole global superpower, while China is now considered to be an emerging superpower.

In 2022, 45% of the world's population lived in "some form of democracy", although only 8% lived in "full democracies".[7] The United Nations estimates that by 2050, two thirds of the world's population will be urbanized.

The world economy expanded at high rates from $42 trillion in 2000 to $101 trillion in 2022, and though many economies rose at greater levels, some gradually contracted.[a] The European Union greatly expanded in the 21st century, adding 13 member states, but the United Kingdom withdrew. Most EU member states introduced a common currency, the Euro. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also greatly expanded, adding 13 member states.

Effects of global warming and rising sea levels exacerbated the ecological crises, with eight islands disappearing between 2007 and 2014.[8][9][10]

Globally, from January 2020 to May 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, causing more than 7 million reported deaths,[11] and around 18.2 to 33.5 million estimated deaths,[12] while at the same time, causing severe global economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s.[13]

Due to the sudden proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices, such as smartphones becoming ubiquitous worldwide beginning in the early 2010s, more than two thirds of the world's population obtained access to the Internet by 2023.[14] After the success of the Human Genome Project, DNA sequencing services became available and affordable.[15][16] There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.[17] Generative AI-based applications such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have accumulated billions of users, and allow users to instantly generate complex texts, images, art, and video, comparable to the sophistication of human work.[18] Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the United States mainly dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program.[19][20]

  1. ^ "Majority of Americans distrust the government". Reuters. 19 April 2010. Archived from the original on 24 December 2015. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  2. ^ Lake, David A. "Rational Extremism: Understanding Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century according to Kathii Erick Gitonga" (PDF). quote.ucsd.edu. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  3. ^ "Working with Private Industry | Research Pages | The Stimson Center | Pragmatic Steps for Global Security". www.stimson.org. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2015.
  4. ^ Fisher, Marc (20 December 2011). "Arab Spring yields different outcomes in Bahrain, Egypt and Libya". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on 26 October 2020. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
  5. ^ Taylor, Adam (29 June 2023). "A historic rise in global conflict deaths suggests a violent new era". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 13 September 2024.
  6. ^ Keating, Joshua (25 January 2024). "It's not your imagination. There has been more war lately. Why the "long peace" may be ending". Vox. Archived from the original on 13 September 2024.
  7. ^ "Democracy Index 2022". Economist Intelligence Unit.
  8. ^ Klein, Alice. "Eight low-lying Pacific islands swallowed whole by rising seas". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 25 December 2020. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  9. ^ "Township in Solomon Islands Is 1st in Pacific to Relocate Due to Climate Change". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  10. ^ "Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment". Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. Archived from the original on 11 May 2019. Retrieved 24 February 2021.
  11. ^ "WHO COVID-19 Dashboard". WHO. 21 January 2024. Archived from the original on 6 February 2024. Retrieved 6 February 2024.
  12. ^ "The Pandemic's True Death Toll". The Economist. 25 October 2022. Archived from the original on 8 February 2024. Retrieved 26 July 2023.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  13. ^ Gopinath, Gita (14 April 2020). "The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression". International Monetary Fund.
  14. ^ "Global offline population steadily declines to 2.6 billion people in 2023". International Telecommunication Union.
  15. ^ Gent, Edd (8 March 2020). "$100 Genome Sequencing Will Yield a Treasure Trove of Genetic Data". Singularity Hub. Archived from the original on 18 November 2020. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
  16. ^ Molteni, Megan (19 November 2018). "Now You Can Sequence Your Whole Genome for Just $200". Wired. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 28 May 2019 – via www.wired.com.
  17. ^ Frank, Michael (22 September 2023). "US Leadership in Artificial Intelligence Can Shape the 21st Century Global Order". The Diplomat. Archived from the original on 8 December 2023. Retrieved 8 December 2023. Instead, the United States has developed a new area of dominance that the rest of the world views with a mixture of awe, envy, and resentment: artificial intelligence... From AI models and research to cloud computing and venture capital, U.S. companies, universities, and research labs – and their affiliates in allied countries – appear to have an enormous lead in both developing cutting-edge AI and commercializing it. The value of U.S. venture capital investments in AI start-ups exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.
  18. ^ "What is generative AI?". McKinsey & Company. 19 January 2023. Archived from the original on 23 April 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
  19. ^ Signé, Landry Signe; Dooley, Hanna (28 March 2023). "How space exploration is fueling the Fourth Industrial Revolution". Brookings. Archived from the original on 25 May 2024. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
  20. ^ "Chandrayaan-3 Details". www.isro.gov.in. Archived from the original on 23 August 2023. Retrieved 14 February 2024.


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