I should note that I don’t mean literally. I know technically the 21st century started on January 1, 2001 (or if you’re talking about the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ, anywhere from 1993-1997 or so since he was born around 4-8 BC).
But, I think you can make a case that the “historical” 21st century began a decade earlier. The early 1990s was a watershed time, situated on the boundary between the old and the new.
1991 saw the introduction of the World Wide Web (along with the beginning of the commercial, public Internet) and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the true beginning of the global economy, with both the ex-USSR and India becoming part of the capitalist system and China following suit a year later.
The melting of the Arctic sea ice also began around the same time (1990), and contemporary fashion and pop culture began in 1991 with the death of 80s pop culture and the rise of alternative, hip hop, and minimalism.
1991 is also the point where the proportion of people living under democracy in the world reached 50 percent, so it was the end of the “Autocratic Age”.
As to when the 20th century began, I’d say it began with a bang, specifically when Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914. World War One began a new world order and marked the end of the age of empires.
You can always find watershed moments to justify any particular date. For instance, if you say that the 20th century began with the start of the Great War, then you’re excluding the Wright Brothers’ first flight from the 20th century.
The 21st century began on August 8th, 1994. On that day Jerry Garcia died, ending the Grateful Dead, and the Netscape IPO occurred, kicking off the internet boom.
Who do I blame for popularizing analysis like the OP that delineates epochs by focusing on arbitrary cultural touchstones? Gladwell or someone like that?
No, the 21st century started with the iPhone. No, Youtube. No, CRISPR. No, Trump. No, LeBron beating the Golden State Warriors. No, the doge meme…
Similarly, some consider the 19th Century to start with the defeat of Napolean and the Congress of Vienna and end with the start of WW1.
I don’t think these cultural breaks work going back earlier than that though. The next break before that would be what? The Peace of Westphalia in 1648? And before that, Columbus and 1492?
The 16th century started with Luther, ended with the Peace of Westphalia
The 17th century started with the Peace of Westphalia and ended with the storming of the Bastille
The 19th century began with the Congress of Vienna and ended with WW1.
There was no 18th century
I don’t think that centuries mean anything other than numbers on a calendar. Just like how people try to categorize music by “decades”, a century is almost always too large a unit to analyze as a whole.
So, while I do think that something ended in 1914, the “20th century” didn’t start there. Rather, the “era of war” started which didn’t end until 1945. Then, the “cold war era” until 1990. Then, whatever era we are living in now. I predict this era will come to an end at the first catastrophic ecological event, probably before 2050, at which stage we will enter the era of “practical global warming”.
1994 is my answer too. I graduated high school in 1991 and that was basically the same as the late 80’s. Things really changed in 1994 when people started actually using the web. It took another 3 years before things were fully in swing though. The mid to late 1990’s were the Golden Years for anyone working in IT.
Two of the greatest watershed moments in history came almost at the same time – and right in the middle of a calendar century: the fall of Constaninople and Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type.
If these had happened in 1490, rather than the 1450s, we’d be pointing to them as century-distinguishing moments.
WWII has the same disadvantage. I think a really strong case can be made that the entire world’s history is divided into pre-atomic and post-atomic dates – this is A.A. 73 – but because it happened in the middle of a calendar century, no one is likely to point to the first atom bomb as a “century dividing” event.
1991…no. Heck we still had the whole Y2K brouhaha ahead of us. We weren’t even thinking of Y2K back then. The beginning of the web had virtually no impact, it was probably 3 years later that people began using it for anything and I was at NASA. I remember waiting to download a one page article and waiting again every time I scrolled down and thinking, “they want to read newspapers this way?” Maybe 1997 when eBay started and we finally had something two thousandish to do on the web.
Computers were still closer to The Forbin Project then tablets and smart phones. In TFP the computer learned by itself, took over the entire world (over a single phone line), never broke down, and yet communicated with a damn teletype, one letter at a time da, da, da, da! Turned out to be the opposite: glorious full color, full motion video interface that would crash if the lights dimmed. In 1991 USENET was the big social interface, text only.
Want a photo - no problem. Go to the sister binary group, find all 11 posts, decode each one with one program, linked them together with another program, only to discover one post had a missing zero and the picture only opened part way. ARRRRRGH!
Want a video - no problem. Do the same thing except with 50 separate posts. 21st Century - I don’t think so.
Cars in 1991 were stuck in the 80s with low horsepower and mediocre economy.
There are definable periods such as “The disco era”, “The internet age” or “The industrial age”. They have somewhat distinct starting points, but exactly when can be discussed. Is it the very first appearance of a defining characteristic of the era/age, or is it when it becomes wide spread? And what does wide spread mean? Does the internet age start at a different time in the US than in China? And so on and so forth.
Centuries start where they start based on the calendar, and trying to map them to a selection of the aforementioned periods is an exercise for fools.
You could argue the Communication Age, which I unofficially consider this era we are in, started around then, when cellphones began, then the internet/world wide web came into play.
Though the arrangement of Ages and Generations seems to be arbitrated by a mysterious group of unqualified eccentrics. They probably also decide what shoes are in fashion this year.
