2000's

[Tweefo]

If the 1960's are remembered for the space race, the 1980's for Cd's and the the PC what will future generations remember about the 2000's. 9/11 and the (failed) "War on terror"? Seems to be a bit negative to me. Maybe the advances in genetic engineering or the human genome project are a bit more positive.

[Rigil Kent]

Good question, that. I can't think of anything that stands out as sufficiently revolutionary or original to warrant naming a decade after either. But there did seem to be a lot of bygone styles and fashions being revisited (Beetle, Mini Cooper, Fiat 500, Triumph Bonneville, Royal Enfield - and that's just cars and bikes). Maybe we will remember the zeros as the retrocade. Or the epoch of the very large sunglasses.

Mintaka

[Wandapec]

I think the advances in science have been pretty good in the first 10 years. Probably one of the biggies the first 10 years could be remembered for is Internet based social networking - the Facebook & Twitter type applications have had a big impact on communication....

[bluegray]

This decade belongs to Google IMO. Also, cell phones had a huge impact in the last ten years.

[BoogieMonster]

Things that stand out:

The biggest global recession since the great depression.
The rise of China.
Space shuttle disaster and subsequent crippling of the US space program.
The "global war on terror" sham.
The demise of many hard-fought-for, but ultimately lost, civil liberties.
Not that I care but I think many will remember the death of MJ much like the death of Elvis.

To me if I had to pick a technological word, it would be: Convergance.

Everyone is now walking around with smartphones that are email, internet, photo/movie camera, phone, gps, movie/mp3 players. If you buy an ipod touch, you can load skype on that and use that as a phone too. Contrast this to the year 2000, when I didn't even own a cellphone (poor student syndrome), and you realise that mobile communications in the '00s went ballistic.