21st Century Software Inc

[Shaquita]

In2022, 45% of the world's population lived in "some form of democracy", although only 8% lived in "full democracies".[5] The United Nations estimates that by 2050, two thirds of the world's population will be urbanized.

The world economy expanded at high rates from $42 trillion in 2000 to $101 trillion in 2022, and though many economies rose at greater levels, some gradually contracted.[a] The European Union greatly expanded in the 21st century, adding 13 member states, but the United Kingdom withdrew. Most EU member states introduced a common currency, the Euro. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also greatly expanded, adding 13 member states.

From January 2020 to May 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic began to rapidly spread worldwide, with more than 7 million reported deaths,[9] and over 18.2 to 33.5 million estimated deaths,[10] while at the same time also causing severe global economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression in 1930s and the Great Recession in 2008. COVID-19 vaccines were widely deployed in various countries beginning in December 2020. Widespread supply shortages, including food shortages, were caused by supply chain disruptions and panic buying. Reduced human activity led to an unprecedented temporary decrease in pollution. Educational institutions and public areas were partially or fully closed in many jurisdictions, and many events were cancelled or postponed during 2020 and 2021. Telework became much more common for white-collar workers as the pandemic evolved. Misinformation circulated through social and mass medias, and political tensions intensified. The pandemic raised issues of racial and geographic discrimination, health equity, and the balance between public health imperatives and individual rights. Treatments include novel antiviral drugs and symptom control.[11]

Due to the sudden proliferation of internet-accessible mobile devices, such as smartphones becoming ubiquitous worldwide beginning in the early 2010s, more than two thirds of the world's population obtained access to the Internet by 2023.[12] After the success of the Human Genome Project, DNA sequencing services became available and affordable.[13][14] There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.[15] Generative AI-based applications such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have accumulated billions of users, and allow users to instantly generate complex texts, images, art, and video, comparable to the sophistication of human work.[16] Other technological advances have also been made, impacting many, such as the widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent social media applications on the Internet like Threads, BeReal, Clubhouse, BlueSky, Gettr, and Truth Social launched, and introduced recent types of social media, like audio-based and short-form content, further progressing in digital technology. Art forms, such as NFTs, also emerged as well. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the United States mainly dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program.[17][18]

There is a lack of general agreement over how to pronounce specific years of the 21st century in English. Academics have pointed out that the early years of previous centuries were commonly pronounced as, for example, "eighteen oh five" (for 1805) and "nineteen oh five" (for 1905).[19] Generally, the early years of the 21st century were pronounced as in "two-thousand (and) five," with a change taking place around 2010, when pronunciations often shifted between the early-years form of "two-thousand and ten" and the traditionally more concise form of "twenty-ten."

Advances in technology such as ultrasound, prenatal genetic testing and genetic engineering are modifying the demographics[clarification needed] and have the potential to change the genetic makeup of the human population. Because of sex-selective abortion, fewer girls have been born in the 21st century (and since the early 1980s) compared to past centuries, mostly because of son preference in East and South Asia. In 2014, only 47 percent of Indian births were of girls.[20] This has led to an increase in bachelors in countries such as China and India. The first genetically modified children were born in November 2018 in China, beginning a new biological era for the human species and raising great controversy.

Anxiety[21] and depression[22] rates have risen in the United States and many other parts of the world. However, suicide rates have fallen in Europe and most of the rest of the world so far this century, declining 29% globally between 2000 and 2018, despite rising 18% in the United States in the same period. The decline in suicide has been most notable among Chinese and Indian women, the elderly, and middle-aged Russian men.[23][24]

The entire written works of humanity, from the beginning of recorded history to 2003, in all known languages, are estimated to amount to five exabytes of data.[25][26] Since 2003, with the beginning of social media and "user-generated content", the same amount of data is created every two days.[27] The growth of human knowledge and information continues at an exponential rate.[further explanation needed]

Telecommunications in the early 21st century are much more advanced and universal than they were in the late 20th century. Only a few percent of the world's population were Internet users and cellular phone owners in the late 1990s; as of 2023, 67% of the world's population is online,[12] and as of 2019, an estimated 67% own a cell phone.[28] In the 2010s, artificial intelligence, mainly in the form of deep learning and machine learning, became more prevalent and is prominently used in Gmail and Google's search engine, in banking, with the military and other areas. As of 2022, 8.6% of the world's population still lacked access to electricity.[29]

In 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, beginning the era of commercial spaceflight. Entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Richard Branson are working towards commercial space exploration, colonization and tourism, while China and India have made substantial strides in their space programs. On 3 January 2019, China landed a robotic spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, the first to do so.[30]

War and violence have declined considerably compared to the 20th century, continuing the post-World War II trend called Long Peace. Malnourishment and poverty are still widespread globally, but fewer people live in the most extreme forms of poverty. In 1990, approximately one-in-four people were malnourished, and nearly 36% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty; by 2015, these numbers had dropped to approximately one-in-eight and 10%, respectively.[citation needed]

Concepts such as eco-friendly lifestyles, recycling, and upcycling are having a profound impact on daily lives. Sustainable fashion, architecture, and food culture are all important elements that will facilitate the development of an environmentally conscious culture well into the future.[citation needed]

The world population was about 6.1 billion at the start of the 21st century and reached 8 billion by November 2022. It is estimated to reach nearly 8.6 billion by 2030,[31] and 9.8 billion by 2050. According to the United Nations World Urbanization prospects, a 60% projection of the world's human population is to live in megacities and megalopolises by 2030, 70% by 2050, and 90% by 2080. It is expected by 2040, the investing of more than 5 times the current global gross domestic product is expected to be in urban infrastructure.[32]

Climate change remains a serious concern; UN Chief Antnio Guterres, for instance, has described it as an "existential threat" to humanity.[35] Furthermore, the Holocene extinction event, the sixth most significant extinction event in the Earth's history, continues with the widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats as a by-product of human activity.[36]

Economically and politically, the United States and Western Europe were dominant at the beginning of the century; by the 2010s, China became an emerging global superpower and, by some measures, the world's largest economy. In terms of purchasing power parity, India's economy became more significant than Japan's around 2011.[37]

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are decentralized currencies that are not controlled by any central bank. These currencies are increasing in popularity worldwide due to the expanding availability of the internet and are mainly used as a store of value.

As of 2009, Ethnologue catalogued 6,909 living human languages.[44] The exact number of known living languages will vary from 5,000 to 10,000, generally depending on the precision of one's definition of "language", and in particular, on how one classifies dialects.

Estimates vary depending on many factors, but the general consensus is that there are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages currently spoken. Between 50% and 90% of those will have become extinct by the year 2100.[45]

The top 20 languages spoken by more than 50 million speakers each, are spoken by 50% of the world's population. In contrast, many of the other languages are spoken by small communities, most of them with fewer than 10,000 speakers.[45]

The Digital Revolution continued into the early 21st century with mobile phone usage and Global Internet usage growing massively, becoming available to many more people, with more applications and faster speeds.

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