American democracy didn’t start out as a big, inclusive utopia. At the time of our founding, it was a members-only club.

White, land-owning men made the rules. That wasn’t democracy for the people—it was democracy for a few.

But that’s the thing about systems built by humans—they can change.  And over the last 250 years, U.S. democracy has done exactly that. It’s evolved—slowly, and often painfully.

Through the 1800s, voting rights expanded—first to all white men, then, after the Civil War, technically to Black men (though voter suppression laws made that more symbolic than real). White women didn’t get the vote until 1920. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights era in the 1960s that voting rights were available to all of us and started to match the ideals we discussed in school.

We’ve never had a perfect system. Every time people got loud and demanded more, democracy shifted—not because politicians wanted it to, but because citizens pushed it to.

Fast-forward to the 1990s. The internet changed everything. You didn’t need a newspaper column or TV show to get your ideas out—you just needed a website, a blog, or a Myspace page. This was the start of a massive cultural and political shift, even if most people didn’t see it yet. I remember explaining to the Dole campaign in 1996 why they should stream their events on AudioNet.com. They didn’t understand what we did. 

Then came the iPhone, apps, and soon after, social media.

Social media didn’t just connect us—it changed how we communicate. Anyone could go viral and become an influencer.

As platforms grew, so did their power. Algorithms figured out what we like, what we fear, what makes us click. Suddenly, you’re not just scrolling—you’re being shaped. Sometimes by the platform owner.

Your view of the world gets customized, amplified, and fed back to you on loop.

Today, anything our President does, he announces through his own social media platform. He has learned, better than his opponents, that his power is based on garnering enough social media attention and support. He has mastered the ability to feel what direction his support is taking. He knows that the currency of social media is not policy—it’s reinforcement by the algorithms, pushing whatever he wants to promote to as many people as possible. He knows the sustenance of his power is attached to his social media support. 

He knew “They are eating cats and dogs” would trigger the algos into overdrive and reach a lot more people than “My opponent is a threat to democracy.”

Our democracy is not dysfunctional. It's the unequal understanding and use of technology by those in power that is dysfunctional. 

Any and all technology serves us, and democracy best, when in the hands of leaders who understand it and truly want to lead the entire country.

The future of democracy is about leadership.

With leaders who can rise above tribalism and say, “I see all of you —I know I can use technology to talk to you and hear from you,” and with leaders who use technology to unite people around a single identity—being American— who recognize our similarities, our love for this country, and align us behind shared respect, shared opportunity, and shared ownership of the future, our future is bright. 

Democracy is built on livestreams, podcasts,TikTok, Instagram, Reddit posts and AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini and others.  For the first time in the history of our country, there is no way to preclude people from accessing information, education or knowledge. There is no question a kid who struggles in school can't ask a GenAI model and get an answer tailored specifically to how they learn.

I believe that curiosity is what helps kids break through barriers. For the first time ever, anyone, no matter who they are, or where they are from, can be insatiably curious and ask any question. Those answers may not always be right (when have they ever been?), but they will always be readily available. 

While AI will never be perfect, it learns from more sources than any person can. That depth, when paired with oversight, can create more equity in access to knowledge.

No longer are there 20 blue links, 15 of which are misinformation, responding to our queries. The predictive methods of returning information to AI prompts are truly based on science  

If you believe, like I do, that GenAI will create a new Generation AI and light tens of millions of sparks in kids that can shine a light on our country, from the bottom up, instead of the top down, you know that the best is yet to come. 

This path will be messy and imperfect, but also alive. There has never been a time when democracy has been more “by the people, for the people” than today—and it will only become more so in the future. 

Our democracy isn’t collapsing. It’s working just as it should—just as it always has.