4 America in the 21st Century America in the 21st Century For the generations of people born and raised in the early twentieth century the twenty-first century only existed in science fiction novels about the future They imagined driving spaceships instead of cars watching robots clean their houses and living on the moon when the twenty-first rolled around But by the 1990s people realized that daily life would not be changing that dramatically in 2001 the start of the twenty-first century Even before the start of the new century life was changing and bringing both new problems and exciting new developments The end of 1999 caused one of the first problems People realized that computer programmers had not prepared computers to correctly calculate dates after 1999 All of modern society now depended on the correct functioning of computers If computers could not read dates when the year changed from 1999 to 2000 many important things might stop working No-one knew for sure if banks would be able to keep track of Words to Know century SEN-chuh-ree A period of 100 years For example the twentieth century lasted from 1901 2000 The twenty-first century began in 2001 and will continue until 2100 Y2K Bug why-too-K bug Y stands for the year 2000 K is the scientific abbreviation for kilo which means thousand A bug is a problem in a computer program The phrase refers to computer programs that could not read years after 1999 and the problems people feared they would cause Preparation for the Y2K Bug impacted the computer industry worldwide money if air traffic control systems would continue to work or if hospitals would lose patients medical records Countries and companies around the world spent millions of dollars to fix this computer problem known as the Y2K Bug As the clock struck midnight on December 31 1999 everyone waited to see what would happen The world breathed a sigh of relief as no country or company reported major computer problems when the year changed to 2000 The world had avoided its first possible disaster relating to the fast approaching new century On December 31 1999 more than 2 million people welcomed the year 2000 by celebrating at Times Square in New York City
6 America in the 21st Century panicked how could they make money producing and selling new music if people could so easily get it for free They took companies like Napster to court where judges made decisions about how intellectual property like music could and could not be shared over the Internet The courts eventually shut Napster down These court decisions became even more important when Apple Inc first released its iPod device in October 2001 The iPod was a big hit It made MP3 music files like those on Napster easy to carry around and more popular than ever New Internet services sold MP3s to play on devices like the iPod and people became used to buying music files rather than downloading them for free By September 2007 Apple sold more than 150 million iPods making it the best selling digital audio player in history Approximately 26 percent of the American population used the Internet to gain information in 2000 The United States entered the twenty first century by setting a record for the longest period of economic growth ever In February 2000 the U S economy had been growing for over 106 months Growth was starting to slow a little bit but most experts did not see economic problems ahead The country once built on manufacturing now lived in a new economy built on technology The Internet produced many new companies and forever changed the way people bought and sold goods and services Some of these companies invented new ways for people to spend their leisure time In 1999 a company called Napster let people share music electronically for free over the Internet with files called MP3s Music companies and musicians
America in the 21st Century 7 Manufacturers continue to develop and refine hybrid vehicles that are friendlier to the environment and have better gas mileage than traditional models While the new century brought lots of exciting technologies it also brought new worries People began to worry that human use of fossil fuels in cars and industry was changing the Earth’s climate Scientists warned that burning fossil fuels for so many years caused gases like carbon dioxide to gather in the atmosphere and produce global warming People started to wonder whether a very hot summer a warm winter melting icebergs or even tornadoes and hurricanes might be signs of Earth’s temperatures rising permanently Governments around the world argued about who should cut back on burning coal and gas and by how much Ordinary people started to think about how to live in more environmentally-friendly or green ways by recycling using fewer chemicals and burning less fuel Everyone hoped new technologies would come to the rescue with new ways of powering cars and factories When the year 2000 arrived the future was here While it did not look like the science fiction books and movies had predicted the prelude to the twenty-first century did bring exciting new technologies that forever changed modern ways of living Many hoped it would also produce still more technologies to solve new and difficult problems Words to Know fossil fuels FOSS-uhl FYOO-uhls Energy sources such as coal oil and natural gas that develop from the decay of living things in the earth over time global warming GLOHB-uhl WORM-ing The scientific theory that the Earth’s temperature is slowly rising because gases like carbon dioxide gather in the atmosphere and prevent heat from escaping intellectual property in-tuh-LEK-choo-uhl PROP ur-tee Creations such as music art writing and even ideas that creators can sell or prevent other people from using without their permission Internet in-TUR-net A large system of connected computers that allows information to flow quickly around the world and between people and businesses
