Progressive Capitalism

depended on the coal economy to survive.

In 2017, while unemployed, Alex saw a television ad for the Interapt technology services program, which paid $400 a week for six months of intensive training in Apple's iOS software. Interapt was founded by Ankur Gopal, an Indian American who was born and raised in rural Kentucky and sought to bring quality tech jobs to the region. Hughes applied to the program and was accepted. He now describes it as "on the miracle level." It led to a full-time job that allows him to "have a pretty good life" and provide for his family. After finishing his training, Alex earned $42,000 per year as a basic coder, and now makes $77,000 as a lead software developer. He is responsible for managing a team which has members in Chicago and Atlanta that implements software solutions for General Electric Appliances, headquartered in Louisville, to build smart appliances including refrigerators, coffee makers, ovens, and laundry machines. Alex can schedule his own hours and feels lucky to have worked remotely every day during the pandemic.

Stories like those of Alex were on Representative Hal Rogers's mind when he invited me to visit Paintsville, Kentucky, or "Silicon Holler" as he calls it. Rogers is an eighty-three-year-old Republican who has served in Congress for forty years in the heart of Trump country. His referring to the region as Silicon Holler indicates how much Appalachian Kentucky aspires to build a tech-savvy workforce to support their broader economic ecosystem. They reject the emptiness and elitism of the mantra that all laid-off middle-aged workers or liberal arts studen

for building an inclusive society in which all Americans share a common national identity and participate in constructive dialogue. It is founded on the possibilities of sharing technology much more widely, on building the skills and capabilities of all people, and on the basic principles of inclusion and participatory democracy to chart a path to a flourishing society."
-James J. Heckman, Nobel Prize winner and professor of economics at the University of Chicago

"Congressman Ro Khanna's book, Dignity in a Digital Age, is both a practical and aspirational guide to the future of tech, governance, and equity. Congressman Khanna leans on critical race and gender theorists, economists, and philosophers to articulate a vision for the future of the technology sector that centers racial and gender justice and eschews the digital segregation that has defined the tech sector since its infancy. Dignity in a Digital Age asks the question, 'What could our country look like if we legislated and designed for marginalized people to lead the next era of Silicon Valley?' and leads its reader to a measured understanding of how our country can't afford any other alternative. Too often, the voices of people of color who've called for a radical reimagining of technology companies, their hiring and retention practices, and the products they produce, have been shouted down as too radical or their ideas too impractical. Dignity in a Digital Age not only amplifies those leaders, their stories, and their solutions, but provides a legislative and policy roadmap for anyone unsure of how to reach that vision."
-Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder of the African American Policy Forum and professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University

"It might seem counterintuitive for a member who represents Silicon Valley to write a book on expanding technology to the middle of the country, but that is precisely why it is so important. In this 'shake the snow globe' moment, Representative Khanna makes a compelling case for place-based policymaking and how a more well-dispersed innovation economy can help rising cities thrive."
-Steve Case, author of The Third Wave, chairman and CEO of Revolution, and cofounder of America Online

"In Dignity in a Digital Age, Khanna provides a compelling vision of how spreading opportunities in the technology revolution across America can contribute to healing the nation's wounds. Today's technologies allow workers to collaborate on projects with diverse people in disparate locations while staying rooted in their communities. This joint work has the potential to humanize differences and increase the democratic intelligence of the body politic, allowing America to live up to its founding vision."
-Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University

"Ro Khanna is a great American dreamer. His dream, powerfully presented here in personal, political, and philosophical registers, is of a twenty-first-century democracy-multiracial and multiethnic, with fair opportunity for all to participate in the extraordinary fruits of American technological innovation. Deeply rooted in values of equality, freedom, and public reason, Khanna's democracy is also rooted in places-from redwood forests to Gulf Stream waters, from diamond deserts to waving wheat fields. It is a democracy in which strong attachments to families, neighborhoods, and local communities-places that people call their homes-is married to a capacious, generous, inclusive sense of justice. This is the American democracy that my grandparents immigrated for, that my father defended on the beaches of Normandy and in the Ardennes Forest, and that I hope my own children live in. We are in danger of losing it. But with people like Ro Khanna fighting for it, with great moral clarity and political energy, we all have reason to hope."
-Joshua Cohen, coeditor of Boston Review and member of faculty, Apple University

"In this deeply considered and precisely detailed examination of technology's impact on the country's financial future and emotional present, Khanna presents policy initiatives that aim to bring civility back to public discourse, both online and in person, and to level the employment playing field. With both anecdotal accounts and factual evidence, Khanna champions the responsible use of technology to improve lives and unite factions."
-Booklist

"Khanna has a nuanced take on the tech industry and offers genuine solutions to significant problems plaguing the country... [a] commonsense call for change."
-Publishers Weekly

"Just on the evidence of his new book, Ro Khanna is one of the broadest, brightest and best-educated legislators on Capitol Hill... His book is bulging with ideas about how to transform big tech from a huge threat to liberty into a genuine engine of democracy."
-The Guardian US

"[F]ierce and compelling."
-National Book Review

"Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) argues democratizing access to tech can strengthen both the economy and our social fabric with a roadmap to bridging the geographic and digital divides."
-Fortune