I'm at the second day of the Personal Democracy Forum, and after hearing from Larry Lessig and the Internet for Everyone initiative, I can't stop thinking about history. The Internet has changed everything, as the hoary old saying goes, but it's changed it back.

Today's America is larger than the Founders could have imagined. in some ways, we're far more diverse, but mass communication has given us a sort of national culture beyond the regionalism of Jefferson or Adams. The national papers and cable news mean we're all getting our information from the same places, and the national media has followed a centralized, top-down model. It's hard to change the narrative unless you're in the club, it's hard to join the club, and it's harder to keep your independence once you're inside. Yesterday's panelists on semi-pro journalism advocated "citizen journalism" of the Mayhill Fowler model as a remedy, but it's not just a question of the media or of access to information.

At the core, the media matters because communication drives democracy.

When we change the way we communicate, we change our politics. It's slow, of course: TV viewership had been growing for years before the debate that changed the 1960 election. Still, it happens. We see YouTube debates, breaking stories by bloggers, online fundraising -- and it's only growing.

The line between the media and the public is blurring, and so is the line between the ruled and the rulers. Earlier this morning, Larry Lessig spoke about Change Congress, a sterling example of citizens using web infrastructure to put the democratic process back on track.

The Founders' ideal relied on real knowledge of our elected officials. For a representative democracy to work -- for me to give someone my voice and my vote -- I need to trust them. Once that meant I put my neighbor in the state legislature, and he chose our senator, but the bigger we've gotten the harder it is to create that personal connection.

The social infrastructure of the Internet changes all of that. It lets us get involved, and it lets us push our representatives to stand for us and not the special interests. When we can band together, we can make our government depend on us -- and then we can trust them again.