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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Amitroy5 (talk | contribs) at 21:45, 21 September 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

I'm going to add India to the countries affected by the tsunami. I'm surprised you ignored India, which more have died than in Thailand. I'll arrange it in this order: Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and other countries. This is the order by largest number of deaths.

[1] explains how each millenium began in the "0" year "0, 1000, 2000..." rather than the "1" year (1, 1001, 2001...). Surely this means all the "Centuries" pages will need to be updated now a mathematical proof has been shown? --XinuX

I'm not sure if you are joking or not, but "Sorry, Sparky, but there are 11 patterns. You can't ignore the 0. It's always the first value in any number system. So a number system based on finger counting would be Base 11" is clearly wrong since 10 goes to the 2nd place. Therefore, everything he writes is of course, WRONG. Sorry couldn't resist. -Hmib 00:04, 26 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mass Killings

Should 9/11 really be listed as one of the mass killings? Honestly, it just pales in comparison to the others. Maybe list it in INFLUENTIAL EVENTS or something, but not mass killings, it puny. CJWilly

But it is one of the largest mass killings so far. The mass killings are ranked by total number of victims, 9/11 ranks 5th there. --Mixcoatl 13:44, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would natural disasters go under biggest killings? i started a new stub section for natural disasters just in case not--Wonderfool 17:42, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Does anybody notice that we now seem to have six "mass killings" in the list of the five biggest mass killings? And does the tsunami/earthquake really count as a "mass killing" when it's a natural disaster? Dtobias 14:42, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Predictions

Does anyone mind if I remove Mr. Kurzweil's predictions? As someone who did AI-related research, I know his predictions in that area are totally bogus (as indeed any prediction for "real AI" arriving at any time more precise than "not soon, but beyond that no idea"), which doesn't give me any confidence in more of his prognostications. --Robert Merkel

I put them in as a curiosity, so that in the future we can check against his predictions. I hate it when people come up with all sorts of crappy predictions and later nobody takes them up on it. In fact, I would really like to add Moravecz's robot predictions as well (robots take over around 2050 if I remember correctly). Maybe we should somehow emphasize that they are just opinions, not generally shared. Other than random predictions, there's not much we can put into future timline articles anyway. AxelBoldt

Would it be better to start a page predictions for the 21st century? AxelBoldt

Yes, that would be an excellent idea. Sorry I didn't see this before. One thing that might be worth putting in is some of the climate change predictions, for instance. The more the merrier (provided they're from significant people or attract attention for some other reason). --Robert Merkel

I must say, the list of predictions is certainly interesting, and should be kept somewhere. -- Sam

Put your money where your mouth is. Visit longbets.org, a clever way to engage in futurism. Also useful for gathering controversial predictions for the 21st Century page. <>< tbc

I believe there should also be a page on fictional views of the 21st Century. The way the future used to be. How about 21st Century in fiction? --Lee M

There is Timeline of the future in forecasts. Welcome there, but please remember to tread lightly. Add the author, the year when the prediction was made and, if necessary, comment on the trustworthyness of the author. Paranoid 10:23, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I object to Elizabeth II and Mahmoud Abbas being listed as "Influential people in politics" of the 21st century. Granted that this list is highly subjective, but still. Elizabeth II is the queen of a democratic, constitutional monarchy/monarchies, and as such does not exercise any political authority, being more of a symbolic head of state. While not only de jure heads of government are listed (Osama bin Laden), it contains mainly people whose political opinions has some sort of aspect of changing the world, for better or for worse. Elizabeth II does not fit into this. Crown Prince Abdullah does. As for Mr. Abbas, he was the prime minister for a little more than six months of the Palestinian authority, and resigned partly due to his lack of influence. In this case, Yassir Arafat is sufficient. I vote to remove these two. --Gabbe 13:01, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

I vote to remove Aznar. He didn't anything really influential, all he did was give some help to America. That doesn't make you influential, and he is irrelevent now. I don't think his term in office was that outstanding or influential. CJWilly

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.

Influential Scientists/Mathematicians?

Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene as influential scientists of the 21st century? Why don't we start by looking at some Nobel laureates before we randomly promote two physicists and science writers as extremely influential scientists? Compare these with the scientists listed in the 20th century. There we find Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Enrico Fermi, James Watson.... Does either Hawking or Greene even come remotely close to these people? I think no. I'll look into this further, but if someone else could, I'd appreciate it too. -SocratesJedi 07:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, it seems as though they've been included largely because they're bestselling authors and therefore prominent in the minds of whoever stuck them in. It'd be interesting to see some actual scientists' lists of influential scientists. Mr. Billion 08:45, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The lists of influential scientists and mathematicians are both extremely poor, but at the same time, it's difficult to simply pick off Nobel Prize winners. The Nobel is generally awarded when the person is quite old and is no longer really doing research; Ray Davis, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002, for example, is retired and no longer really doing research. However, one could pick off Fields Medal winners, since they're generally quite young and still have many years of research left in them. That said, I think people like Edward Witten, Andrew Wiles, Nicholas Katz, Manjul Bhargava, Richard Taylor, Chandrasekhar Khare, Vladimir Voevodsky, Richard Borcherds, William Gowers, William Thurston, S-T Yau, Michael Freedman, Maxim Kontsevich, Curtis McMullen, etc, are worth considering for the mathematics list. (Witten for the science list as well.) nparikh

Influential people in politics as of 2005

Would Michael Moore warrant inclusion here? –– Constafrequent (talk page) 23:46, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Influential People in Technology

Is it fair to say that the Google guys, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, can be included on this list? Google has changed the face of the internet and the way that people access information (i.e. linking to Wikipedia). Riffsyphon1024 02:47, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Influential People in Entertainment

  • I think Britney Spears has been added and dropped more than once already. Is there any coherent criterion for who should be included or excluded other than people adding in whatever singers / actors / etc. they like and deleting the ones they don't?
  • The 'Boston Redsox'??? Who the hell put that there. Could someone please explain how some American baseball team has been influential to the world. --Jquarry 23:00, 11 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I saw that. I have to note that I am a huge Red Sox fan. When I saw it, I laughed and thought that someone probably wrote on the talk page that it didn't belong there. I was right, and I think that you're right. D. Wo. 06:20, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

Triple Conjunctions

Are all of these triple conjunctions posted by 85.74.7.23 really necessary? I believe because they happen so frequently, that they are usually not regarded as major astronomical events. -- Riffsyphon1024 03:39, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Entertainment

I think we need to distinguish between influential and significant... Britney Spears and the Simpson girls may be significant in terms of sales and popularity, but I hardly think they (especially Ashlee Simpson) are influential... pomegranate 13:50, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

Should he be considered for Influential People in Religion yet, or is it too early? -- Riffsyphon1024 19:02, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

I think it's too early. He hasn't accomplished anything yet other than don the papal crown. Mr. Billion 05:38, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Looks like somebody's stuck him in anyway. Are we going to include every pope this century? If so, he warrants inclusion here simply by virtue of being Pope. If not, he will only warrant inclusion if he does something outstanding.
I think that over time we're probably going to see a lot of non-influential people inserted here, simply because immediacy makes things seem more important. If somebody reads the current version of the article at the end of this century, they may not have ever even heard of pope Benedict XVI because his reign will likely be relatively short, and there isn't any reason to expect him to do anything particularly remarkable. Whoever replaces George W. Bush will also almost certainly be placed here by someone, regardless of how active a president his replacement actually is. Mr. Billion 23:24, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is appropriate to place Pope Adol... I mean Pope Benedict XVI here. He has already stirred up quite a buzz, his reign is likely to determine the future of Catholicism, so on. It is not fair to compare this page with the 20th century, since this century has had only 5 years and the last century 100. We can delete stuff as they become less important. -Hmib 23:56, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If the Dalai Lama and Falung Gong's founder are included, I see no reason not to include Ratzinger. John Paul II was far more influential in the 20th Century, while his reign in the 21st was not only short but also less important, compared to what he did in the 1980s and 1990s. As for Ratzinger, I would think that he should be included simply by virtue of being pope. If in, say, 20 or so years, his papacy turns out to be rather unimportant, we can delete him. The "too early" argument applies to the whole article. saturnight 23:30, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)
All right, then. I've got no more objections. Mr. Billion 17:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Science fiction set in the 21st century

There's got to be countless thousands of science fiction stories set in the 21st century. Maybe the section "Science fiction set in the 21st century" should instead be its own article or category? Either way, we'll eventually need some criteria for inclusion. Mr. Billion 05:57, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Overpopulation bias?

The list of issues and concerns seems to be NPOV except for the section on overpopulation. It seems that the issue is biased to the supposition that overpopulation is evil. I believe the contrary. Densly populated nations like Luxembourg and Switzerland have higer quality-of-life indicies than sparsely populated nations like Mongolia and Angola. D. Wo. 06:29, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

I tried to NPOV it. -- Beland 00:12, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Large portions of the world have current population deficits..

Some areas have populations that are shrinking, not growing. Take Europe for example. If this trend has changed in the last 2-3 years, it hasn't changed much. The global population could easily double without becoming a major global problem.

Also, I always see some remark of "The War on Terror" on any political or social article even remotely related. I always see the criticisms of the 'war' but I never see the rebuttal as to why it might just be fighting the greater of two evils. Terrorist attacks involving islamic fundamentalists have been occuring since WW2. North Korea, for example, is an immediate threat to two U.S. allies, Japan and South Korea. Immediately after 9/11, the DOW industrial average dropped over 7% to around 8950, the largest decline ever in a single day. If you are referring to the Patriot Act, the slight majority think that the Patriot act doesn't go far enough. Note that only 13% know much about the Patriot Act. 60% know little or nothing about the Patriot act.

Just try to keep it objective for all readers. If you are going to start by listing criticisms, link the rebuttals as well. IMHO, McCarthyism and Nixon's strong arm tactics were more of a threat to civil liberties than the "War on Terror". Some would agree that the "War on Drugs" impedes on civil liberty more than the "War on Terror". Speaking of which, that page could use a Pro and Con list.

Influential people in Religion

I've removed Joel Osteen and Billy Graham, since their fame in the USA does not mean very much in the rest of the world. I've thought a bit about who should be included in this list, and I think it should suffice to list leaders of or very influential people in the largest world religions. Khamenei, Benedict XVI and the Dalai Lama should definitely be included. Now, I don't live in America so I don't know who are the main leaders in American Protestantism (maybe Graham should be included after all). I don't know much about Hinduism either. Can somebody help me here? --saturnight 12:18, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Issues and concerns

Should there be an item added about morality (sexuality, media content, etc.)? Religion (clashes of civilizations, cultural integration, adapting to the 21st Century, secularity, recruitment, etc.)? Democracy? Human rights? Anything else of major global importance? -- Beland 01:21, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Technology Missing?

The article reads as if technological progress comes to an end, frozen in time, since 2005, for the remainder of the century.

It is extremely likely that we will have the technology to:

  • record and communicate everything that we see and hear
  • live our life in virtual reality, rending physical transportation near pointless
  • augmented reality
  • read the spoken voices of the people around us
  • speak electronically without moving our mouths
  • construct visual maps of knowledge, making it possible to learn much faster than today

It is possible (likely?) that we will see:

  • human-level AI, and then post-human AI
  • nanotech assemblers
  • life extended to 150 (by isolating brain from body,) and then (within a few extra decades?) beyond (by siliconizing the brain)

I work on TaoRiver and WikiCities futures wiki.

LionKimbro

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