Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley in Congress. Over the years, he has come to greatly admire the creativity of its entrepreneurs, their ability to get things done quickly (so unlike the sluggish pace of Congress), and their tremendous capacity for wealth generation. These, he believes, are qualities our democracy needs. And since ours is a digital age, our democracy particularly needs the work those qualities achieve in Silicon Valley.

And yet Silicon Valley does not always work well for the democracy it inhabits. First, its creation of wealth and jobs currently benefits a narrow elite, and leaves not just many people but also many parts of the country, behind. Second, the Internet has proven to be a source not only of critical argument that enhances democracy but also, probably more often, of rumor-mongering, viral hate speech, and encouragements to bypass thought and listening in favor of venting and immediate preference-satisfaction.

Khanna’s own story, which he engagingly tells in an early chapter of his book Dignity in a Digital Age, orients the reader to the particular brand of political optimism cum pragmatism he favors. Khanna’s maternal grandfather was a freedom fighter in Gandhi’s Quit India movement, imprisoned for some years by the British Raj, and later an MP in India’s first Parliament. His mother moved to the United States to marry his father, already studying chemical engineering here. Their parents arranged the meeting, but they then fell in love, and the marriage was a happy one. Khanna’s father took a job with a chemical firm, staying with the same company for almost 30 years, and his mother taught special needs kids in school. Both benefited from the loosening of immigration restrictions against non-Europeans at that time, and from the policy of recruiting engineers and scientists during the Cold War.

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