In this digital age, how can we organise society and the public sphere in ways that will preserve the sense of individual dignity? Ro Khanna, Congressman for Silicon Valley, and author of Dignity in a Digital Age, discusses this important topic with Nigel Warburton.
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How should the digital space be regulated?
How should the likes of Twitter and Facebook be controlled to ensure the proper functioning of democracy?
Unlike most academic philosophers, Rokhana has a rather direct way of of influencing policy.
He's a democrat, member of the House of Representatives.
He's also the author of dignity in a digital age.
Rokhana, welcome to philosophy Bites.
Well, I'm a fan, and it's an honor to be on.
So the topic we're going to talk about today is dignity in the digital age.
Could you just say briefly what you mean by dignity here?
Sure.
Dignity just means that every person has intrinsic worth.
And if you believe that every person has intrinsic worth, then the political project requires us to consider what that entails, both from an economic perspective in terms of respecting their worth as part of an economy, and from a citizenship perspective, in terms of respecting every person's worth in terms of their citizenship.
So why is that a special issue in the digital age?
Well, of course, this has been an age old issue, but the question becomes, if you believe on an economic perspective, that part of respecting people's worth economically is to give them the opportunity for productive work, to give them the opportunity to produce and create wealth, that it's not sufficient just to have redistribution in providing people with benefits, then we have to think very strategically about a lot of people who have been totally left out of the modern wealth generation engine, and particularly places that have been left out.
And this is particularly apparent to me from Silicon Valley, which has produced $11 trillion of wealth, 25 million digital jobs.
But these are highly concentrated, and so many people are anxious and don't know if they or their kids will have access to that.
And then from a citizenship perspective, of course, there are so many issues whether a person really can participate as an equal in the public sphere.
I mean, we have a concept of the town hall.