What If the 21st Century Begins in 2014?

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-31/what-if-the-21st-century-begins-in-2014-.html

by ivankirigin • 13 years ago

15 13 13 years ago

mobile.bloomberg.com

Sorry, the 21st Century began on September 11, 2001, when my wife ran into our bedroom and shouted "now you have to wake up! They flew a plane into the other tower!!"

elwell2• 13 years ago

He addresses that idea in the article.

ximeng3• 13 years ago

"First, let’s dismiss one parochial notion -- that the terrorist attacks of September 2001 were the major break point between centuries. Nonsense. We were engaged in the same struggle before and after. The U.S. shrugged off more damage during any month of World War II. Indeed, nothing could be more “twen-cen” or 20th century than the overwrought focus that some (not all) Americans apply to Sept. 11. Much of the world assigns no particular relevance to that date."

elwell2• 13 years ago

That link goes to mobile version. Here is print version which is probably ideal: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-12-31/what-if-the-2...

rralian3• 13 years ago

This was a very uplifting article, as lately I've been somewhat preoccupied by the demons of Orwellian surveillance and propaganda, growing class inequities, overpopulation, pollution, mass extinction, the eroding usefulness of antibiotics, and the march of technology putting greater and greater destructive power at the hands of the desperate. I suppose my money is still on terribleness, but hope is at least a useful thought experiment.

codex• 13 years ago

In other words, you're underemployed and don't have small children--prime circumstances to foster Internet anxiety addiction.

rralian3• 13 years ago

Quite the opposite actually. Just being honest about what I've been pondering lately.

wyager2• 13 years ago

Directly counteracted by amazing new crypto technologies, a rising standard of living for everyone, better farming and sustenance techniques, a (successful) push for more efficient technology in general, the fact that there actually really isn't much mass extinction going around (not sure what you're referring to here), rapid development in fields like nanomachinery and nanomedicine, and the fact that technological equalization of destructive power could very easily be seen as a good thing.

ximeng3• 13 years ago

For extinction, presumably refers to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

"Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), states in the foreword to their publication AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment:[17] "We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century."

rralian3• 13 years ago

I'm being over-dramatic certainly, and there are incredible things going on at the same time. Lots of numbers going in the right direction. But I've been thinking both about the world my children will inherit and the continuation of the species in general. I would not say that the good things are outweighing the bad at the moment for perpetuation of the species or our way of life in general. I do hope I'm wrong and we wind up with a more Star Trek kind of world than Deus Ex.

CWuestefeld• 13 years ago

This feels like a lot of post hoc rationalization to me.

What If the 21st Century Begins in 2014?

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