2000s
Cultural Research > Decades Homepage > 2000s Intro > 2000s Essay
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Introduction - January 1, 2000: Y2K, the anticipated millennium change over computer glitch, fails to end civilization. - Wikipedia – ‘The free on line Encyclopedia that anyone can edit’ – launched January 2001. - January, 2001: George W. Bush sworn in as 43rd American President. - September 11 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. leads to Bush’s ‘War On Terror’ and, subsequently, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. - Pop Idol premiers on British TV 2001; American Idol follows in 2002. In the same year, Euro becomes legal tender. - Hip Hop more popular than Rock in early years of 00s. - 7th, final Harry Potter book – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – published July 2007. But it is Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) which is top grossing film so far in the decade. - Time magazine nominates ‘You’ as its ‘Person of the Year’, 2006. - Universe confirmed to be 13.7 billion years old. (Fundamentalist Christians know otherwise) - Dow Jones tops 14,000 mark in 2007 but later that same year ‘mortgage meltdown’ begins in America. The ‘subprime’ lending crises and the ‘credit crunch’ are on the way. - China hosts the XXIX Summer Olympics in Beijing, 2008. - November 2008: Barack Obama elected first Afro-American US President – meanwhile American economy continues its freefall. |
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Essay Excerpt
While the ‘90s had been a decade in which technology changed everything, the ‘Noughties’ as some called them would be a decade when not new technology but rather the uses to which it was put (Web2.0, ‘consumer generated media’) would spark an unexpected and unprecedented revolution ... While slow to realize the import of what was going on, the traditional media and its professional analysts did finally grasp the nettle when Time magazine announced that its ‘Person of the Year’ would be none other than ‘You’. |