So, who knows. Perhaps the great historic conflict defining humanity in the 21st century won’t be over global economic inequality or the soggy shakeout from climate change or privacy in an era of the commercial-military digital surveillance Googleplex. Perhaps the conflict will come down to the Facebook friend request on your smartphone and the block party outside.
Cyberspace was once a there. For years now, though, in our continually cloud-connected world of Fitbits and Apple Watches and the Internet of Things, we’ve been seamlessly stitching cyberspace to the fabric of everyday meat reality. I don’t mean to sound all glum and elegiac and, ugh, old. I love being addled by some sweet new tech, and can’t wait for the day when I get to use my own holographic gestural morphnet interface to track down and terminate my renegade android servants angry about their preprogrammed mortality. (The arrogance!) But in a world made flat and sleek by an ever-present, instantly communal, compelling virtual reality — a community at once global and utterly delocated — I wonder what will happen to our feeling for a sense of place, for the concrete, everyday immediacy that surrounds us. With one of our feet permanently planted in Skynet, where goes the neighborhood?
Totally overthinking things! But it was on my mind as we put together our “ Good neighbor policy” feature. The people we profile come from across the valley and from all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, from the rurals to the suburbs to the inner city. But they have one thing in common: a highly developed antenna devoted to what’s happening on their doorstep, a keen sense of place and presence that runs counter to what sometimes seems to be a creeping, collective benign apathy to the here and now. In this tour of the neighborhoods of the Las Vegas Valley, you’ll meet no-nonsense eastsiders determined to chase the drug dealers out of their condo complex; exurban villagers banding together to preserve the peace of their rural enclave; and, yes, suburbanites who remix the real and virtual, using social media to keep their bonds strong. There’s a crusty canard that says Vegas doesn’t have neighborhoods with character or history. These people prove resoundingly otherwise.
Of course, I’d be a neandermook to deny that technology is an indispensable tool. Tech literacy is no longer the sole preserve of the elective Computers 101 class. In today’s education system, science, math, engineering and technology (buzzwordified: STEM) must be bread-and-butter topics if we want our children to thrive in the new economy, and a recent Brookings Institution report urges Nevada to get on the ball. How prepared are our schools to integrating STEM curricula into the classroom? We explore that question.
Oh, and speaking of tech and cyberspace and social media and all that stuff I just kind of went off on: Be sure to check out the eye-popping refresh of the desertcompanion.com website! To be sure, we didn’t just pour the magazine into a prefab digital mold. Rather, it’s a strenuous rework that tightly knits our content together with that of Nevada Public Radio’s “KNPR’s State of Nevada” and all things NPR for easier, deeper and richer reading. And be sure to check the desertcompanion.com website often for news, perspectives and web-first features. Whether you’re a confirmed Luddite or a smartphone addict, we aim to celebrate a sense of place no matter the medium.