In the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the United States, we asked 25 tech insiders—founders, inventors, thinkers, and more—to tell us about an innovation that they think reflects where American life is headed, speaks to the present in a meaningful way, or otherwise evokes this moment in time. The answers ranged from the unmistakably modern, including several different takes on AI and smartphones, to the surprisingly timeless (think bicycles). Here are their responses.
Apple's iPhone is unveiled at a press conference in central London in September 2007. Shaun Curry—AFP/Getty Images
Selected by Tim Cook
When iPhone arrived in 2007, it didn’t just change technology. It changed how we live. That same year, TIME named it the Invention of the Year and called it “the phone that forever changed phones.” But what mattered most wasn’t just what iPhone was, but what it made possible. It brought a powerful idea to life: that extraordinary technology could live in your pocket and enrich your life every day. What inspires me most is what people have done with it since. They’re connecting with loved ones, improving their health, creating, building businesses, changing industries, and sharing their ideas with the world. And we’re still at the beginning. As technologies like AI unlock new possibilities, the products we all rely on will only get better, and the impact of what our users do will only grow.
Cook is the CEO of Apple; in September, he will become executive chairman of its board of directors.
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Selected by Dr. Anna Lembke
I’m fascinated by the ways that people increasingly turn to AI to resolve interpersonal conflicts, and what it means for our future when a computer is telling us how to talk to each other.
Lembke is professor and medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her next book, Radical Surrender: Letting Go in a World Addicted to Control, will be published in November.
Selected by Whitney Wolfe Herd
American business is at the forefront in implementing new AI prototyping tools, which have already reshaped how I show up as a founder. I can now test and iterate on ideas alongside our team. It’s brought me closer to the creative process and enabled a return to “founder mode,” where leadership is more hands-on, decisions move faster, and teams can adapt with greater speed and clarity.
Wolfe Herd is the founder and CEO of Bumble.
Selected by Tracy Chou
We will soon have an infinitely scalable supply of intelligence deployed to perform real-world work. The first job humans have already ceded to AI agents is coding, formerly the domain of highly compensated software engineers. AI is coming for other jobs too, and quickly. Just as coal, steam, and industrial machinery freed humans from physical labor—but upended much of work and life in the process—there will necessarily be a radical reorganization of society in our near future.
Chou is a founder and software engineer.
Selected by Marian Croak
The core of America is defined by innovation and a commitment to service. Constructing a novel communications network utilizing Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, and developing the breakthroughs necessary for its reliability and resilience, enabled the handling of billions of daily calls. I found it a true privilege to facilitate easier access to voice communication for communities worldwide.
Croak is a vice president of engineering at Google. She helped pioneer modern Internet calling while at Bell Labs/AT&T.
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Selected by Gabrielle Zevin
The early internet was built on comments sections, message boards, and online reviews, and we’ve never gotten over them! You can draw a path from these primal forms to every social media website, Yelp, Reddit, and perhaps our current President. The ability to publish instantly, anonymously, and largely free of consequences is not something my grandparents would have dreamed of, desired, or considered legal. The teachings of these early comments sections are with us every day: fast over correct, outrage over nuance, never admit you’re wrong. The future depends on us being better online citizens in the face of algorithms pushing us in the opposite direction.
Zevin is the author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and other novels.
Selected by Aza Raskin
To navigate an era of exponential technology, America needs, in the parlance of AI, "recursively self-improving” governance, to ensure our systems do not become irrelevant in the face of rapid technological progress. The technology that captures this moment for me is the digital democracy system pioneered in Taiwan by Audrey Tang. It shows that the real frontier isn’t just building smarter AI, but building systems that can help millions of people think together, find unexpected consensus, and govern at the speed of AI.
Raskin is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
Two women standing by their bicycles circa 1890. Robert Alexander—Getty Images
Selected by Reshma Saujani
In the 1890s, the bicycle, as we know it today, finally let women go where they wanted, on their own, without asking permission. It even played a central role in the fight for women’s suffrage—a simple machine with outsized impact. Today, it reminds us what technology should do: expand freedom and opportunity. Millions of American women are still fighting for what the bicycle once gave them: the freedom to move, make decisions, and control their own futures. At 250 years in, that’s still the most American question we can ask of any new technology: Will it set people free?
Saujani is a lawyer, activist, and the founder of the nonprofits Girls Who Code and Moms First.
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Workers at the Cord automobile plant, operated by the Auburn Automobile Company, in Connersville, Ind., circa 1936. Atlas Photos/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Selected by Tekedra Mawakana
America was founded on the aspiration to freedom and the pursuit of happiness. For over a century, the automobile has been the living embodiment of that promise. Today, autonomous technology is the boldest reimagining of those ideals: an improbable idea that travel should be safe, reliable, and even magical. Waymo was born in the U.S. and speaks to that audacious belief in the pursuit of happiness—and that everyone deserves certainty, freedom, and to arrive home safely.
Mawakana is co-CEO of Waymo.
Selected by Ray Kurzweil
The artificial intelligence revolution (which I saw coming in 1999) is the most profound change in human performance ever. We have determined how human knowledge is coded, and we will multiply our ability to understand it exponentially. This will greatly enhance our creativity and innovation.
Kurzweil, a leader in AI for 64 years, an author, inventor, and futurist, has predicted that AI will achieve human-level intelligence by 2029. His latest book is The Singularity is Nearer.
Selected by Nicholas Carr
A harbinger of generative AI, the autocomplete function brought the American dream of an effortless life a little closer. In the future, it told us, we would no longer need to compose our own thoughts and words. The machine would speak for us.
Carr is a journalist and writer. His latest book is Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart.
Selected by Tristan Harris
Scrolling news feeds are a human invention that have taken over the world, directing the infinite, raw creative potential of billions of human beings and collapsing it into billions of hours a day of information consumption and “doom-scrolling.” They have not only shaped the information we see, but also the incentives of all other media that is now invisibly optimized to “fit” into the medium of bite-sized content. They have reshaped the white matter of our brains and terraformed the ways humans perceive their “reality.” By optimizing for attention, these systems subtly privilege outrage, novelty, and emotional intensity, distorting perception in ways that are hard to see but impossible to ignore. The result is a society that struggles to agree on what is real at all. It is the problem beneath other problems, because it constrains our ability to coordinate.
Harris is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
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Selected by Joanna Gaines
The stand mixer is one of the most recognizable items in any kitchen and has been for over 100 years. But today, its place on our countertops represents more than just efficiency. In a culture defined by hurry and convenience, we can feel this atmospheric longing in the air for a more intentional way of life, marked by slower rhythms and meaningful connection: homemade bread rising; fresh cookies hot from the oven; creating something from scratch and sharing it with the people we care for. The stand mixer is a symbol of unhurried possibility. And while it could easily be tucked away in a cupboard, most of us will choose to keep it out—close and within eyeshot—whether we use it often or not at all. Because it’s no longer just a pretty tool, but a visual cue that the moments we long for are still within reach.
Gaines is a designer, author, and co-founder of the media and lifestyle brand Magnolia.
Selected by John Hope Bryant
Artificial intelligence is the definitive expression of America today because it reflects both our greatest strength and our greatest test: our unmatched capacity to innovate and our obligation to decide who innovation is really for. AI is reshaping how we work, learn, build, and create value, but this moment will ultimately be defined not by the technology itself, but by whether we use it to expand human potential, economic inclusion, and access to opportunity for every American.
Bryant is the founder of BG Ventures and Operation HOPE, and author of Capitalism for All.
Selected by Arianna Huffington
Constant iteration has always been a distinctive part of the American character, from the journey to a “more perfect union” to countless individual acts of reinvention. And now, AI’s powers of personalization are making self-improvement possible in the most important aspect of our lives: our health. We’ve known for centuries that our daily behaviors—food, movement, sleep, stress management, and connection—have a profound impact on our health. Using AI to apply this ancient wisdom in powerful new ways, both in our daily lives and within our medical system, is going to have a transformative impact on the health of millions within our country.
Huffington is founder and CEO of Thrive Global.
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Selected by Ajit Pai
The smartphone was conceived, designed, and brought to life by American ingenuity—and it’s a unique and powerful example of how that innovation enriches our lives, promoting national competitiveness to boot. Today, more than nine out of ten American adults carry a smartphone. It's how we stay in touch with friends and family, how we access healthcare, how we learn, how we work—and much more. And as artificial intelligence reshapes our future, it will happen right in the palms of our hands, through the smartphones we carry with us every day.
Pai is CEO of CTIA and served as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2017 to 2021.
Selected by Lawrence Lessig
We've turned the decisions about what information we consume over to algorithms—algorithms maximizing not for truth or justice or the American way, but for engagement. And it just turns out—too bad for us— the stuff that engages us most turns us into ignorant people who hate each other. Think fast food for the brain, because it is the very same physiology, with a perfectly analogous effect.
Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the nonprofits Creative Commons and Equal Citizens.
A live demonstration uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition in dense crowd spatial-temporal technology at the Horizon Robotics exhibit in Las Vegas on Jan. 10, 2019. David McNew—AFP/Getty Images
Selected by Joy Buolamwini
Facial Recognition Technologies (FRTs) are powered by AI systems that read and compare human faces to guess a person’s identity, age, gender, race, and more. Right or wrong, these guesses can inform whether you are allowed to travel, given access to entertainment venues, verified for payments, scrutinized by law enforcement, provided medical attention, or even targeted by drones. Without public deliberation, FRTs are being integrated into neighbor-facing doorbells, discreet smart glasses, storefronts, and schoolyards. They show how easily technologies sold for convenience can shackle us to surveillance networks. FRTs demand we determine whether our valuable face data will be the ticket to participate in public life, or protected as a critical frontier of privacy.
Buolamwini is author of Unmasking AI, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, and a computer scientist with a doctorate from the MIT Media Lab.
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Selected by Evan Spiegel
Growing up, I loved computers, but to use one I had to be in the computer lab at lunch while all my friends were in the schoolyard. Then came a screen in every pocket, further distracting us from the real world. The question isn't whether technology will reshape our lives; it’s whether we build the next generation of computing around humanity, or keep asking humanity to organize itself around technology. Specs, Snap’s upcoming glasses, is the first true computer built around see-through lenses instead of a screen, designed so you can share the same world, the same moment, and the same experience with the people around you. We created every piece of the stack and leveraged core components manufactured right here in the United States because America has always bet that technology should uplift people.
Spiegel is the co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc.
Selected by Jeff Dean
Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) are a paradigm-shifting technology. These first-ever custom AI chips spurred a green revolution within American Silicon Valley chipmakers, who now strive to build less costly and more energy-efficient custom AI chips. The first version demonstrated that customizing hardware for AI workloads using systolic arrays and lower-precision arithmetic was 30 to 80 times more energy-efficient than contemporary central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) were. Subsequent generations of TPUs have continued this focus on efficiency for both training and serving AI models, and are used for some of the world's most capable AI models. In April, we announced our eighth generation of TPUs, TPU 8t and TPU 8i.
Dean is Google’s chief scientist and co-lead of Gemini.
Selected by Jason Holmes
You might not think about them much, but lithium batteries power this moment in time—specifically the devices Americans use daily, from smartphones to electric/hybrid cars to earbuds, all of which improve our lives. When used properly, these batteries offer energy density and reliability that others cannot match.
Holmes is the director of testing at Consumer Reports.
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Solar panels as part of the Pastoria Solar Project during a tour of the Pastoria facilities in Arvin, Calif. on April 16, 2026. Eric Thayer—Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Selected by Bill McKibben
In April 1954, Bell Labs announced that its New Jersey research team had produced the first solar cell. The New York Times announced the news on its front page, under the headline “Vast Power of the Sun Is Tapped By Battery Using Sand Ingredient.” At the time, it could power nothing more than a tiny toy Ferris wheel; in this decade, as subsequent engineering triumphs have made it cheaper to use for power than coal or gas, it is powering an unprecedented energy transition. Ironically, it's the Chinese who are reaping most of the benefits, and our government that is trying to squelch its use.
McKibben is an environmentalist and author. His latest book is Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.
Selected by Robin Wall Kimmerer
More than 250 years of exploitation has squandered the natural richness of our country. As we imagine our possible futures, the most important technologies of this moment are the tools of ecological restoration and nature-based climate solutions. These tools can mitigate up to one-third of carbon emissions. We can leverage strengths of Indigenous knowledge and climate-smart restoration to heal the ecological damage to our beloved homelands. In this historic moment of reckoning, we have to move from an ethic of “Drill, Baby, Drill!” to the practice of “Plant, Baby, Plant!”
A member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer is a naturalist, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, and founder of both Plant Baby Plant and the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a payload of 24 Starlink internet satellites soars into space after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base, seen from Santee, Calif., on July 18, 2025.. Kevin Carter—Getty Images
Selected by Gwynne Shotwell
Modern rockets were born in America and matured in various countries around the world over decades. Human spaceflight—Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo—was an early and exciting driver for rockets. But there wasn't a true paradigm shift after those early days until SpaceX landed and launched flight-proven rockets. That was the major modern breakthrough in a field largely considered to be on the shortlist of the most complex and challenging things humans are capable of doing. All the extraordinary things SpaceX does today, and will do in the future, trace their origin back to the moment we successfully landed an orbital class rocket. It single-handedly put America back on top of the (space) mountain.
Shotwell is the president and COO of SpaceX.
Selected by John Scalzi
It's a supercomputer with more power than the Apollo astronauts took to the moon, and we use it to look at pictures of cats. In it we hold our friends, our photos, our opinions, and our attention spans. It's our outboard brain, and if we lose our phones we probably lose a part of ourselves. Still, it's worth it to turn them off from time to time, and see who we are without them.
Scalzi is a science-fiction author. His latest book is The Shattering Peace.
(Photo-Illustration Source Images: Li Xin—VCG/Getty Images, Jim Watson—AFP/Getty Images, Manuel Mazzanti—NurPhoto/Getty Images, Pascal Mora/Bloomberg/Getty Images, Ritesh Shukla—Getty Images, Future Publishing/Getty Images)
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