As the New Year is encroaching just around the corner, a lot of us are likely reminiscing 2014, and thinking ahead for 2015, praising what we’ve done well, and pondering plausible resolutions for future improvement. Perhaps you’re hoping for better grades, more community involvement, building personal connections, healthier lifestyle, or college acceptance—or maybe even a collective goal. Individual resolutions aside, I believe we must provoke one primary communal goal for global refinement. Heading into 2015, we are a decade away from a quarter of the century, and for all this time we have still been dabbling, but, of course succeeding, within the Information Age, and gradually, the age of Big Data. Yet, have we thought of how the developments of our time can be further deepened, and how we can emphasize their applications?

Most of us have already studied the many eras of innovation throughout modern history. Philosophically, the world experienced the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, emphasizing reason, analysis, and individualism. Economically, the First Industrial Revolution followed, transitioning industry from manual labor to machine, and wood to coal and iron. That funneled into the Second Industrial Revolution, giving the world steam-powered transportation, large-scale manufacturing, and booms of RGDP per capita. Politically, the Gilded Age brought the tolls of prohibition, educational improvements, ethnic/racial group tensions, tariffs shaking up the monetary system, and empowered unionists and suffragettes. Briskly, the Atom Age produced some of the first atomic bombs, computers, transistors, assembly lines, and skyscrapers, and then the Progressive Era reiterated liberalism, social activism, direct democracy, anti-corruption, and the efficiency movement. Finally, reeling back around to the Digital Revolution, commonly known as a Third Industrial Revolution that launched the Space Age and Information Age, the world shifted from analog, mechanical, and electric to digital, merit-based society, and a more high-tech global, interconnected economy.

Nowadays, we have discovered an abundance of advances that have already improved our lives dramatically. The question remains: what’s next? Do we want to keep expanding this information age, and continue our dependence on constantly desiring new materials even when the marginal benefits do not outweigh costs? There is no doubt that, while technological development has boosted economies and increased quality of life in most places, it has also provided its fair share of harm, such as obliterating certain jobs, decimating parts of our environment, and we even have Elon Musk literally warning us about artificial intelligence. Or, could we, instead, focus more on sustaining already attained greatness? Assume we choose the latter—by what name would it emerge in history?

I propose: The Era of Maintainability.

So, what does maintainability mean? By definition, it means, “to keep in existence or continuance; preserve; retain; keep in an appropriate condition, operation, or force; and keep unimpaired.” The current human condition provides enough evidence that modern issues require prioritizing and optimizing based on maintenance:

• The world population has surpassed 7 billion people; while the overall growth rate is projected to decline, in many areas, population is still on the rise.
• Up to 80% of people live on less than $10 dollars per day
• Almost 900 million people are undernourished
• Nearly 700 million are left without access to safe drinking water
• Only about 3 billion access and use the internet – less than half the population
• The world uses nearly 195 million MW-h of energy from non-renewable sources; contrary to 46 million MW-h of renewable sources
• The world literacy rate (people 15+ y/o who can read and write) is 84%
• Secondary education prices have grown by 3% annually over the past 30 years
• People under 25 years of age have an unemployment rate of 16.4%
• There were nearly 8 million deaths this year due to cancer
• 1.6 billion people – 23% - don’t get a say in their governments, and will be harshly punished for exercising rights.

Evidently, our primary goal needs to be ensuring a system with ease of access and reliability in providing the needs of all people, particularly in future generations. We must be able to sufficiently nourish the world population; with advanced technology we already obtain on a primarily aqueous planet, we should be able to provide enough clean drinking water; everyone should have efficient means of access to education at all levels; and, our food and lifestyles should permit our sustained health. Such goals must have precedence beyond many current trepidations, such as pushing toward unnecessarily extravagant new frontiers, waging wars and occupations for political reasons, and the ineffective red tape and turf wars of bureaucracy.

Our generation must value optimization of new developments and goals, and prevent aimlessness in technological, economic, and political alterations, regardless of perceptive differences, in order to maintain everything we already have in this matrix we call Earth, for everyone’s goodness.

Nelson Mandela once said, “sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great.”

Except, this time, it will fall upon our generation to lightly dismiss our differences, to uphold what has been great all along.

On that note, we wish you a Happy New Year and the very best with your resolutions—no matter how individualized or globalized!

Sources:
"Average Rates of Growth of Published Charges by Decade." Trends in Higher Education. College Board. Web. 18 Dec. 2014. .
[For: tuition hikes]

Hammer, Kate. "Global Rate of Adult Literacy: 84 per Cent, but 775 Million People Still Can't Read." The Globe and Mail. The Globe and Mail Inc., 8 Sept. 2012. Web. 18 Dec. 2014. .
[For: literacy rate]

Shah, Anup. "Poverty Facts and Stats." Global Issues. 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 18 Dec. 2014.
[For: people living on less than $10]
Shierholz, Heidi, Hilary Wething, and Natalie Sabadish. "The Class of 2012: Labor Market for Young Graduates Remains Grim." Economic Policy Institute. Economic Policy Institute, 3 May 2012. Web. 18 Dec. 2014. .
[For: youth unemployment]

Toro, Ross. "Measuring Freedom and Repression." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 3 July 2012. Web. 18 Dec. 2014. .
[For: oppressed populace]

"Worldometers." Worldometers.info. Web. 18 Dec. 2014. .
[For: population, internet users, undernourished people, those without safe drinking water, energy use, deaths due to cancer]