If you were sitting where I'm sitting and you heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone walk, you… - Bill Clinton

And all that connectivity makes us more vulnerable to malware and spyware,” I say. “We understand that. But I’m not so concerned, right at the moment, about whether Siri will tell me the weather in Buenos Aires or whether some foreign nation is spying on me through my toaster.” Augie moves about the room, as if lecturing on a large stage to an audience of thousands. “No, no — but I have digressed. More to the point, nearly every sophisticated form of automation, nearly every transaction in the modern world, relies on the Internet. Let me say it like this: we depend on the power grid for electricity, do we not?” “Of course.” “And without electricity? It would be chaos. Why?” He looks at each of us, awaiting an answer. “Because there’s no substitute for electricity,” I say. “Not really.” He points at me. “Correct. Because we are so reliant on something that has no substitute.” “And the same is now true of the Internet,” says Noya, as much to herself as to anyone else.

Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry.

"Think of how much more rewarding it would be if we all came to work every day asking, "Who can we help today and how can we do it?" instead of "Who can I hurt and how much coverage can I get for it?