When will the 21st Century start?

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This isn't some thread from 1999 arguing about when the millenium properly comes. This is my belief that, at least some of the time, a century (or a decade) sometimes takes a while to get started. I'm not sure when the 20th really got going, but 1900 or 1901 don't feel like it. When was Relativity published? 1907 or so? Same time, more or less, as Les Desmoiselles - that feels more like the start of the century. When I did 20th C history in school, they barely touched anything before WWI.

So have we had anything like this yet? I suspect that isn't easy to answer, as my first two would hardly have seemed like epochal Modernist moments at the time, and if I'm talking about the tone of the century being set, it's kind of hard to know that just yet. I guess 9/11 followed by Afghanistan and Iraq could be it, but I'm interested in whether anyone has any other nominations.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:34 (twenty-one years ago)

The 21st Century started on Monday when I bought my first mp3 player.

― TV's Mr Noodle Vague (noodle vague), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, wasn't the Sixties from 64-73? Or thereabouts?

― andy --, Friday, 6 May 2005 22:42 (twenty-one years ago)

And doesn't the premise for this whole thread show that cultural trends / historic eents don't move according to our sense of time. We shouuld drop this while 20 / 50s/ 90s business. It was invented by the media in the 1960s as a way of conceptualizing fashion / youth culture. Meant nothing then, is just annoying now.

― paulhw (paulhw), Friday, 6 May 2005 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

The 50s:

1946-1963

fun!

― Masked Gazza, Friday, 6 May 2005 22:59 (twenty-one years ago)

The 70s:

1974-1979

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 6 May 2005 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

teh 19th c.

1815-1914

― Masked Gazza, Friday, 6 May 2005 23:04 (twenty-one years ago)

Insomnia:

now

― Girolamo Savonarola, Saturday, 7 May 2005 00:36 (twenty-one years ago)

It'll be 9/11. Or maybe when Bush was first elected. In the future, when the history of the 21st Century is taught, that'll be the point where it all begins.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Saturday, 7 May 2005 10:07 (twenty-one years ago)

The 90s - 1988 to maybe 2004?

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:22 (twenty-one years ago)

According to Eric Hobsbawm, the "short" 20th century lasted from 1914 (the start of WWI) to 1991 (the fall of communism), so we've been living the 21st century for fourteen years already.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I know I started this, but I do feel that it's impossible to know at this point how it will look several decades from now, let alone a hundred years. 9/11 is the only clear contender for the start of the century in historical terms, but that rather depends on what the major events and flows and themes of the century turn out to be. Can we be sure that scientific or artistic moments as major as relativity or Les Desmoiselles haven't just happened, and we haven't noticed? And even those nominations rely on what may be a perspective that won't last. Maybe relativity won't seem as important as quantum physics (I suspect it isn't), and Modernism might come to seem as just another little phase of no greater significance than Rococco or Mannerism - I can easily see Duchamp's readymades looking more important and interesting in 50 years time, for instance.

On the other hand, we can't just sit back and wait for the fucking test of time, as that isn't proof of anything. The only perspectives we've got is the current set.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:39 (twenty-one years ago)

start: Welcome!

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 7 May 2005 14:43 (twenty-one years ago)

If it's anything like the last century, it'll start in earnest in 2014.

― Aimless (Aimless), Saturday, 7 May 2005 15:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Back that up two years. This page implies that something's gonna happen in 2012.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Saturday, 7 May 2005 16:06 (twenty-one years ago)

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