Dignity in a Digital Age

1. Democratizing the Digital Revolution: A Vision for Inclusion

A key pillar of building a multiracial, multireligious democracy is providing every person in every place with the prospect of a dignified life, including the potential to contribute in and shape the digital age.

Digital dignity. The digital revolution has reshaped the economy and society, but it continues to sideline, exclude, and manipulate too many. The goal is to advance democratic values by empowering everyone to direct and steer these digital forces. This requires uplifting service workers, regulating digital platforms, and prioritizing online rights and quality discourse over profits.

Family journey. The author's family journey, from his grandfather's involvement in the Indian Independence movement to his own election to Congress, exemplifies the American dream. This book is grounded on the belief that the core of his family’s story should be commonplace, not exceptional. It’s a very simple story, about having worthwhile job opportunities, high-quality education and health care, and better prospects for one’s kids.

Inclusion imperative. Placing democratic values at the center of the twenty-first-century tech revolution is about more than unleashing untapped talent. It demands that we uplift service workers who face economic precarity. It requires the regulation and redesign of digital platforms to prioritize online rights and quality discourse over profits.

2. Place Matters: Reconnecting Communities to Digital Wealth

A central thesis of this book is that no person should be forced to leave their hometown to find a decent job.

Economic divergence. Despite remarkable progress in technology and globalization, many American towns have hollowed out, with local factories closing and industries moving to far-off cities. Just five U.S. cities account for 90 percent of the innovation job growth in recent decades. This extreme disparity is distancing us from each other and deepening fissures in our nation.

Humanist perspective. National policymakers have ignored the destabilization of local communities, overlooking the extent to which Americans’ sense of fulfillment is tied to where they live. Choosing to stay where you grow up might mean a life where extended family members meet for weekend meals, instead of one where grandchildren only see their grandparents on FaceTime.

Place-based policymaking. We need place-based policymaking that extends twenty-first-century jobs beyond the current superstar cities to overlooked communities. A national agenda must not simply favor the redistribution of wealth but should focus on the democratization of the value creation process itself.

3. Building Common Purpose: Digital Equity as a Bridge

It is my belief that increasing connectivity and digital opportunities for left-behind Americans can reduce the divisiveness and dysfunction of our contemporary democracy.

Economic concerns. Economic concerns are consistently ranked by rural residents as among the most important to address. The multiplier effect of tech jobs means that when they arrive tailored for the needs and talents of a local community, they bring a wide range of supporting careers, incoming revenue, and changes in organizations and processes driven by digitization that can spark new growth.

Community building. Wealth generated from building digital capability can be spent on building community. Smaller cities and towns want to keep local hospitals and schools open, and their congregations and communities intact. Their main issue is vacant storefronts and declining property values that impede local investment.

Democratic values. We cannot leave the evolution of technology to an invisible hand that may foster creative brilliance and overnight billionaires but also leaves many behind, creating stark inequality both geographically and within communities with a strong tech presence. Our digital economy needs more equity and a better national equilibrium, which will drive greater economic prosperity for all.

4. The Economics of Innovation: Decentralizing Tech Opportunities

Ultimately, this has led to increased geographical inequality, as high-income and low-income jobs have been sorted into different locations.

Geographic inequity. The rise of the internet facilitated not the obsolescence of city centers but the further concentration of jobs in cities with highly educated populations. As reported by Brookings, 72 percent of employment growth since 2008 has taken place in cities of more than a million people.

Digital jobs. Microsoft estimates that by 2025, there will be 149 million new “technology-oriented” jobs—with nearly 13 million of those additional jobs in the U.S. That means the total number of U.S. tech jobs at 25 million would be as many as the number of manufacturing and construction jobs combined.

Tech multiplier. The tech multiplier is “the largest multiplier of all: about three times larger than that of manufacturing.” That is, tech jobs tend to create more jobs in other sectors, as innovative companies and their employees rely on lawyers, baristas, gym trainers, hairstylists, nannies, and food service workers in addition to construction workers.

5. COVID-19 Realignment: A Catalyst for Tech Decentralization

One of the unexpected side effects of Covid-19 was that it transformed the innovation economy, opening up the possibility of tech decentralization to places that have been left behind.

Remote work. Many tech companies realized that the quality of remote work did not decline and often improved. Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins says the effectiveness of remote work during the crisis “has given us confidence that we can hire talent anywhere and have them participate productively on teams, regardless of their location.”

Decentralization. Facebook’s and Twitter’s decisions to allow for “permanent remote working” garnered the most headlines, but other companies made similar decisions. Pinterest paid $89.5 million to terminate a major office space lease in San Francisco because they wanted a more “distributed workforce.”

Hybrid model. What is likely to emerge over time is a hybrid model, in which companies allow for a limited number of days of remote work for those employed at various regional hubs and support a widely dispersed employee network that extends to more rural communities. This may, unfortunately, have a negative impact on service jobs linked to office complexes in existing tech metropolises.

6. A Twenty-First-Century Jobs Agenda: Policy Proposals

During the height of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt offered a vision for “bold, persistent experimentation” to provide Americans with jobs and economic security.

Digital grant colleges. Abraham Lincoln created the land grant universities in 1862 by signing the Morrill Act, which parceled federal land out to each state that they would use to establish public universities. We should provide funding to these institutions to create digital grant colleges analogous to the space grant and sea grant colleges that exist today.

National digital corps. We should create a national digital corps where the brightest minds in technology spend three to six months partnering with universities, community colleges, and local businesses to build effective credentialing and apprenticeship programs and mentor newly trained workers in left-behind communities.

Computer science for all. Every K–12 student in America should have computer science as part of their curriculum, alongside math, reading, and science. To achieve universal computer science education, we must invest in training and certifying more teachers, with a target of at least twenty thousand new computer science teachers in the next five years.

7. Restructuring Tech Companies: Beyond Diversity Officers

The systemic bias in tech will not be solved simply with more training sessions, reports, or conferences.

Diversity officers. Tech CEOs and senior executives must take ownership of diversity goals with their compensation tied to metrics, just as they own sales or revenue numbers. We should adopt a national law that requires a certain percentage of women, Black, and Latino leaders on the boards of public companies.

Workforce diversity. Our government should provide favorable consideration for software contracts to companies with diverse executive teams and at least 10 percent Black or Latino workforce on a project, with that benchmark indexed to increase as the overall tech workforce diversifies.

Tax credits. We should also have a tax credit of up to $10,000 per employee for companies that hire tech workers in heavily Black and Latino areas. This may lead to reform in recruiting practices, such as eliminating whiteboard interviews that put candidates on the spot to write out code, deemphasizing pedigree, anonymizing applicants, or rejecting consensus hiring.

8. Tech Partnerships: Investing in Communities of Color

Black and Brown communities must be participants in the wealth generation of the digital revolution.

HBCU partnerships. We need to credential at least one million Black and Latino Americans for high-skilled tech careers in coding, developing, and cybersecurity. The key is for HBCUs to partner with boot camps such as Thinkful, Flatiron, and App Academy that provide a job guarantee at the end of their training with leading tech companies.

Early access. The federal government should establish a $5 billion fund over the next five years that school districts can access to provide Chromebooks, MacBooks, or Windows laptops for the 11 million students who lack their own.

Democratizing capital. We should establish at least twenty regional venture capital funds of $500 million each to supplement private money and invest in start-ups with high growth potential. We need financing options for businesses that are not aiming for astronomical returns.

9. Protecting Freedoms Online: An Internet Bill of Rights

This chapter underscores the power that big tech companies wield in shaping our digital architecture, and in turn it calls for stronger antitrust protection to curb and remedy their anticompetitive practices and provide new players in different regions with a fair chance to succeed.

Opt-in consent. Users should affirmatively consent before their data can be collected, transferred, or used. Every tech platform should have a data policy section in plain and simple language on their home page.

Knowledge of data use. Users should have a right to know what a company’s algorithms are “optimizing for,” what the variables are in that process, and how they evolve. This does not mean a company needs to disclose every new iteration of their algorithm, which is updated almost daily.

Deleting personal data. Every person should have the right to delete their personal data from digital platforms and businesses’ databases. The EU in the GDPR goes much further than a right to delete personal information and gives its residents a right to be forgotten.

10. Deliberation and Science: Reimagining Digital Citizenship

A theme running throughout these pages is how to facilitate robust citizen participation in this new era, whether on science policy, climate policy, or even foreign policy.

Science in democracy. Public confidence in science was high during the space race, but public opinion and funding have both languished despite scientific progress and literacy being more important than ever. We need a new Apollo moment to build solar plants, electric car factories, battery plants, and clean steel, and to drive breakthrough technologies such as synthetic biology.

Internet's impact on deliberation. The internet was supposed to be the great equalizer. It launched viral movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and the Sunrise Movement, and gave voice to communities long shut out of traditional media. Yet it also spread conspiracy theories and hate far and wide, promoting violence that culminated in the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.

Alternative to social media. We need an alternative to the dominant model for social media that elevates attention-grabbing and addictive content. A well-regulated market can facilitate the emergence of multiple digital forums, including publicly backed ones, that have new structures and features to improve our public discussion.

11. Decentralizing Foreign Policy: A Multiracial America on the World Stage

The digital age has already shown that technology can be used on the one hand to combat repressive regimes and, on the other, to entrench state surveillance, censorship, and authoritarianism.

Technology on foreign policy. The digital age has already shown that technology can be used on the one hand to combat repressive regimes and, on the other, to entrench state surveillance, censorship, and authoritarianism.

Decentralization of foreign policy. Within a democracy like the United States, the digital age will give citizens beyond the Beltway a larger voice in our country’s role in the world. There is concern over whether the decentralization of foreign policy would lead to “America First” skepticism of multilateralism, or to greater global engagement.

Pluralistic democracies. The lasting question for the United States and its allies is whether pluralistic democracies can establish transnational norms and rules for dialogue on global digital platforms to respect dignity.

12. Democratic Patriotism: A Vision for a Cohesive, Diverse Nation

It asks us to embrace a spirit of civility so we can appreciate and support a plurality of local cultures, including many important customs and traditions passed down to us, as vibrant threads comprising our nation.

Composite nationality. The central aspiration of this book is to lessen some of the bitterness within our nation. It is my belief that increasing connectivity and digital opportunities for left-behind Americans can reduce the divisiveness and dysfunction of our contemporary democracy.

Cultural anxiety. Cultural anxiety is a response not only to economic anxiety or to the fear for losing what is familiar, but also to racism that demagogues are stoking in light of the changing face of leadership and power.

Democratic patriotism. I ultimately put forth a theory of democratic patriotism that calls for citizens to have an equal opportunity to participate in building our national culture, which can inspire shared attachment as we experience tensions stemming from social and demographic change.

Last updated: April 23, 2025