…quite fashionable clothes, right?

Some fashion designers and photographers come to me and offer their work. Of course, I buy this work from them. It’s not bribery or anything like that. But I’m happy to promote a creative industry scene.

So it’s all Taiwanese‑branded?

Yeah, this one is actually from the National Palace Museum – Travelers Amid Mountains and Streams, or 谿山行旅圖.

Can you say that slowly again? Shi‑shung…

Xīshān Xínglǚ Tú.

Xīshān Xínglǚ Tú.

The desiginer is Justin Chou, and the brand is called JUST IN XX.

Right.

I didn’t know that designer before; a photographer offered that to me, and I think it’s pretty good, so I just started wearing it. First, I bought it from them.

I’ve just seen you wearing it a lot of times. You seem to really like it.

Yeah. It’s pretty nice.

Were you into fashion before being…

A little bit. One of my cousin, is a fashion and a textile designer, well in his way studying in Paris and featuring the Harry‑something Fashion Show with his work. He keeps me updated a little bit, but I’m not personally a fashion designer, of course.

Of course. Maybe let’s talk quickly about fashion. That’s not our topic here, but apparently, that’s something you’re interested in personally.

I heard there are quite a few Taiwanese fashion designers, but then they are mostly shunned by the richer Taiwanese people apparently, who want to buy more Gucci and stuff. Is that true?

I don’t know. My cousin, Tsungchien, was a part of the Hyères International Festival. He reports that because he uses Taiwanese textile materials and things like that, he got quite a lot of support from the local Taiwanese community who wants to see the very advanced textile community more promoted in the world stage.

Justin also said the same to me. I think because Taiwan has a very strong textile industry, a lot of them look into fashion and also newest ideas like circular design, things like that, as a way to promote their material science capabilities.

Circular design means like recycling and doing new clothes out of old ones.

That’s right.

That fits very well with your SDG goals.

Exactly. That’s also part of the message I want to get across.

Is there an aesthetic interest in fashion as well, or?

It helps communicating ideas. Certainly. Recently, one of my interviews with a Japanese journalist, we published an entire video conference online. Some hip hop music makers took that into a civil rap song, and that just reiterates many of my core ideas ‑‑ well, not really mine ‑‑ many core ideas in that interview and they turned it into a very trendy, fashionable experimental music.

Apparently, it was a hit. That again helps getting the ideas across. I am not very adamant on which format to use, as long as it gets people talking about these ideas, I think is pretty good.

When one looks at your Twitter and Facebook profiles, and also these videos you’re doing quite often, one might think there’s an implicit statement. You’re quite good at posing. It’s not meant in a negative way. Many people love you for that, I guess.

“Taiwan model”, in the sense of fashion model?

Yeah. I think there was recently a video by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, where you posed really as model. They even said, “Model, Audrey Tang.”

They did that, but I didn’t participate in that creation. I released in the Public Commons, the Creative Commons, all the materials including my interviews, and photographs, and such. People ranging from the MOEA, to the Hakka Council, and I think many other ministries and so on, just took my photos and remixed it however they want. I’m fine with that.

Even within the government…

They’re having fun remixing my contributions to the Commons.

Very original. [laughs] Very good. You are wearing Taiwanese designers only, or?

Not really. This is I think, Issey Miyake.

Japanese?

A Japanese designer. I’m not very picky. As long as it works to convey the ideas, I’m fine.

Right. These pans, what kind of idea do they convey, or is it more the overall thing?

I chose this to go with a wind‑like robe. I wore that in the Oslo Freedom Forum in Taipei. That was the first time. It was meant to convey a solemn but also committed stand in solidarity with the Hong Kong people who fight for their democracy.

Around that time, I choose this whole attire basically to take a more poetic, less business‑like view to their struggle. I sang, actually, at the Oslo Freedom Forum, combining the Sunflower song, “The Island Sunrise,” with the “May Glory Be To Hong Kong.”

That’s the anti‑ELAB song. Those, with also some Leonard Cohen. I’m not choosing Leonard Cohen because he is Canadian. [laughs] I am choosing Leonard Cohen because the idea of “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” fits in with the thematic idea of darkness breaks apart, which is The Island Sunrise theme, and the May Glory Be To Hong Kong, which continues this trend.

The attire is meant to convey darkness, but also, within the gaps of darkness, there is lots of hope.

That’s the design, and so this serves as, I guess, the backdrop to show the darkness and the fluidity of the darkness that allows possibilities of light.

Right. That’s a very beautiful line by Leonard Cohen, right? “There is a crack in everything.”

Yeah, I translated it to Mandarin.

Let’s continue where we stopped last time, more or less.

That’s right, yes.

I’m pretty sure we’ll talk…

There’s a transcript, of course, so we can start right where we left off.

Other things as well. Maybe just quickly, before we restart…

Previously, I’m lost. Anyway.

No worries. You just mentioned Hong Kong, so what’s your feeling about the current situation there?

We’re, of course, committed to provide the humanitarian support that’s needed. To me personally, it feels very much like when I was in Germany for a year, when my dad was doing a PhD there.

His research subjects are all people in their 20s who were Tiananmen exiles. They couldn’t go back to Beijing anymore after what transpired there, and they escaped. Many of them actually went through Taiwan or is still staying in Taiwan. Some of them even become professors to the Sunflower occupiers.

I think there is a continuity here in the firm idea that there is no Eastern democracy or Western democracies. It’s just democracy. The idea that, even though you don’t see democracy in your generation, it helps to work a little bit even more actively than your neighbors.

Try to resonate with their ideas until that the younger generations do not take authoritarianism as granted.

I think we are already not in the structure of my interview anymore, because I wanted to talk about your one year in Germany as well, anyway. You just mentioned it. Let’s talk about it. You were 11, I think?

That’s right.

What kind of memories do you have related to that?

I remember, again, in the just living room, where my dad interviews the Tiananmen exiles, we would watch televisions together. There’s around that time no end of televisions just trying to look at what transpired during the Second World War, what went wrong there, how would no one ever do that again, and things like that.

It’s a very popular topic in Germany around that time.

It still is, I think.

Sure, of course, but then I mean the Berlin Wall just fell at that time. For them, it’s also truth and reconciliation time, I guess. I remember those pictures showing the various sceneries from the Nazi Germany days and the people very seriously looking at those footages and deliberating what went wrong. I remember that.

That must have been the first time you were confronted with Nazi footage, right?

Exactly.

What kind of impression did it leave on you?

It seems to me that, at that time, and especially with the people who watched this with us, [laughs] it really is a very large leap of faith to look at those portraits and footages and try to sympathize with people there who belonged ‑‑ very fiercely, I guess, in their mind ‑‑ to a larger collective spirit that transcends individual destiny.

That will just reincarnated, imbued as spirit in the figure, and so on. I’m already very well‑versed in critical and creative thinking at that time, so it doesn’t appeal to me. It seems almost alien that people would behave that way.

Then, well, because it was Tiananmen exiles who sits in the same living room watching with me, they affirm that, during the Cultural Revolution, or during various other authoritarian campaigns in the PRC, and indeed, with my own parents’ memories of the Chiang Kai‑shek days, they assure me that people do behave like that.

I guess it’s a cautionary tale. I’m fortunate in that I’ve been exposed to liberal democracies for a very long time before I approached those ideas. To this day, I would say I still sympathize, but I cannot really empathize with how it feels within that almost totalitarian…Well, in the case of Nazi Germany, totally totalitarian regime.

It resonates with Taiwan’s history as well a little bit, at least?

For me, it’s twice‑removed. It’s in the television, interpreted through the people who have lived through authoritarian regimes, deliberating on how to make that never happen again, as the people in the television are doing. I’m second removed, very far from that.

I think Taiwan had their first really open, democratic elections in ‘96, right?

That’s right, the presidential one.

Taiwan wasn’t really a democracy in the beginning of the ‘90s, either, right?

No. I remember the martial law days. It’s just I don’t ascribe to the aesthetics. You were asking about aesthetics. I wasn’t a part of the aesthetics.

Yeah, of course, right. Where were you in Germany, actually in Berlin?

No, in Saarbrücken. To be precise, in Dudweiler, which is a little bit far away from Saarbrücken, which is the University of Saarbrücken that my dad went to. It’s very close to the French border.

I know.

We also learned a little bit of French as part of the fourth grade.

Wow. Is that how you learned German as well?

No, just conversational. Of course, if you give me a long German text, I can pronounce it with pretty good tonality, but I don’t know what it’s writing. [laughs] I just learned enough German to pass by in the conversations.

When I live in Paris for three weeks at the time, at the end of that three weeks, I started to speak a little bit French, almost by osmosis. Then, by the time I fly back to Taiwan, I promptly forget those, because I think in English.

When I think in English, it tend to just subsume all my French and German vocabulary. I don’t have an active inner voice in either French or German anymore. I never had. When I was 11, that was just individual words that I had to translate internally.

That’s encouraging that even someone as clever as you can forget foreign languages.

No, machine translation really is a crutch, that if you rely on it, you gradually just externalize those capabilities. I use machine translation so much I don’t really know how to read German or French without machine translation anymore.

Don’t you think there is something getting lost in this process?

Of course. Writing is the loss of the oral history and the oral culture, as Greek philosophers famously argued. You can still feel that when you go to the Eastern part of Taiwan, where this oral culture of the indigenous cultures, they really require a lived‑in experience, rather than writing.

Just to transplant those into kanji actually means the fossilization and the loss of that culture.

You just said you think in English.

Yeah, I do.

You must think in Chinese as well when you speak Chinese.

I don’t.

You don’t?

I think in English here.

Oh, yeah, all the time?

Not all the time. For things unrelated to work, like daily conversation, or things like that, of course, I still think in Mandarin. These are just five‑year‑olds’ vocabulary though.

For that, I sometimes think in Tâigí as well, because Tâigí is also my native language.

Tâigí?

Taiwanese Holo.

Ah, OK, Taiwanese Holo. Not Táiyǔ, but Taiwanese Holo?

Táiyǔ works as well. Táiyǔ is the Mandarin word for the Taiwanese Holo Tâigí. This is extremely political, [laughs] so I try to use the original language’s self‑pronunciation — what Tâigí‑speaking people refer to as “Tâigí”.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that, that’s my first language too; my grandma speaks that language. My vocabulary remains maybe six years old, because after that I went to the primary school. At that time, it’s all Mandarin. I don’t really think in Mandarin nowadays for work.

I guess you also do think a lot of, most of the time, in English, because tech is just so much English, of course.

That’s one part of it. It’s also because, when I think in Mandarin, that’s maybe when I start translating, or do some poetic experiments, or things like that. For me, it’s more like a creative medium than anything else.

When I’m doing work, poetics is maybe not the highest [laughs] on my radar. Maybe the usual way is just to get through the various different positions, building shared values, and things like that.

For those, it requires ‑‑ for me at least ‑‑ a precise formulation of the ideas involved. For that, my Mandarin isn’t always good enough for that.

Oh, wow, OK. Back to my questions written here. One of your collaborators once said, “We can replace the entire government by AI in 500 years. I have no problem saying that.” From what I know about you, that’s not necessarily your goal, is it?

I think that’s from Lin Shuyang, right?

Yeah.

When she said that we can replace the entire government in AI, or by AI, in our office, when we say AI, that’s assistive intelligence. When we push the idea of assistive intelligence a little bit into the future, that would mean maybe augmented intelligence.

Still, the emphasis is not on replacing human beings, but on, for lack of better word, uplifting.

Absolutely, yeah. We’ve talked about it. I was just curious, why would she use a term that everybody understands differently, the way you were just describing it, like replacing humans?

You would probably have to ask her.

That’s not your goal, of course?

It really is my goal to help the introduction of assistive intelligences in a way that builds the social norms, in a way that are truly prosocial. If we do that right, then augmented intelligence becomes the norm.

Then, of course, the government, as a hierarchical machine, falls out of favor, because once you have sufficient amount of capability of distributed computing or decentralized decision‑making, then adhocracy naturally replaces this idea of exclusive sovereignty.

That’s the conservative anarchism part of me. If you have a bunch of augmented intelligences that conserves most of the human cultures, including that shared in that painting, then I’m OK with the singular idea of government being replaced by adhocracy.

You call it adhocracy.

Adhocracy, yes.

Wow. Talking about the current forms of digital participation and your platforms, one major example, or one major use case that is mostly mentioned is this Uber case.

That was long ago.

That was long ago, yeah. There are many nice little proposals, like just now, there are proposals like increase the stops of two trains on the line between Ilan and Hualien and stuff like that.

Yes. Glad you noticed.

Two things, maybe. From what I saw just currently, not many people are really participating, apparently.

We have a lot of people joining as signatures. I don’t know why you are saying that there’s not so many people. If you just sort in the Join platform by the signatures, you get lots of signatures that are well beyond the 5,000 needed.

The remote education one, the one that tells the government to make sure that the traps ‑‑ bear traps, whatever traps ‑‑ the sale and possessions of traps need to implement the penalties and increase the existing criminal liability and fines. That’s over 5,000.

There’s a 4,400 ‑‑ almost 5,000 now ‑‑ that calls for prohibition of synthetic camphor pills. Camphor that may induce hemolysis and possible carcinogenesis in patients with broad‑beam disease. I’m not so sure of the machine translation anymore.

Anyway, [laughs] these are still very active.

Yeah, of course, there are always some proposals. Just my question is maybe are you happy with the overall participation? It could always be more, right? What’s your assessment?

I think e‑petition is just one venue, and people focus a lot nowadays their energy on this idea of a constitutional change and referenda. There’s only so many seconds in a day that a person can focus their energy on.

When there is something as appealing as a constitutional reform, naturally, it draws many people’s attention into those ideas, rather than the more mundane, like asking your minister to work with you part of idea.

I’m fine with that. We understand we’re in a constitutional moment.

What for you are the major examples and major successes of your digital participation initiatives? Like, real policy outcomes, changes.

What’s most often cited is a designer says the tax filing system is explosively hostile. We co‑created a tax filing experience for Mac and Linux. It was so good so that the Windows people started using it, and so good so that the company that implemented it offered to use it to sell masks.

Then the convenience store joined and repurposed that system to become a mask vending machine preordering, of course, and things like that. It’s the same system, and now, it’s apparently going to be repurposed into this economy revitalization ticket thing.

You’re going to use the same system?

Yeah, it’s the same system. It’s the original system that was created by this co‑creation with Chih-Yuan Cho who complained about the explosively hostile tax filing system. It’s the same thing, and just forked into many different small parts.

That, of course, is a very successful example, because along this pathway, many designers that I have no idea existed just contributed their spirit. Through co‑creation, anyone who cared or who complained just joined in making the experience better.

That’s an ongoing example, and it’s still ongoing. It’s going to change how we view the National Health Insurance card. It’s going to change how we view the mobile app version of National Health Insurance cards.

It’s going to be essentially an online authentication system. Nobody could have predicted that. Certainly, not when he posted on the Join platform that the tax filing system is explosively hostile.

Maybe we could call that circular tech.

Yeah, circular tech. Appropriate technology, meaning that you can appropriate it for your purpose.

That’s one example, the tax filing system evolving in many different applications. Maybe two, three other ones?

Sure. That’s more tech, although it is policy. It doesn’t result in a law change, so to speak.

There’s also a, personally, I think a really groundbreaking one in working with the amateur people who fish and the people who fish for a living. Literally the fishing platform, [laughs] which joins this online platform with an offline platform.

We actually went to the fishing platform and held the conversation there. It’s live streamed, and with many representatives from the fishers people’s union and so on.

It’s groundbreaking, too. It’s the first time that we mix a regular urban planning or space planning, land use planning, way of conversation with a virtual e‑petition. People who are amateur fishers people, who do not have an organized union or association as professionals do, but they still have a loosely‑coupled online coalition.

They often verbally attack each other before this co‑creation meeting, [laughs] but we brought the cyber and the physical communities together and settle on a way that broadly opens access to the sea and look at the opportunities where they can actually help each other in maintaining a better culture, and also relieve the government of so many pressure of forbidding people to go to the sea and to the oceans.

Later on, that will lead to the opening up the mountains policy, where we’d hold a very similar deliberation with people who are mountaineers, hiking people, and so on. I think that space planning part of it, and the cyber physical co‑creation part of that, that is groundbreaking.

That was the Join proposal on, let’s see if there is an English translation, “Amend the fishing port law to fully open fishing ports and building fishing platforms.” That was the petition.

Maybe the last one?

Last one, and all three. OK. Sure. Know that the fishing one led to the mountaineering one, led to many other ones. Now, they are still today working with the Ocean Council on the follow‑up to that.

There’s a more recent one that talks about…Oh, there’s an official translation. Much better. “Regulations governing the labeling of prepackaged food‑grade salt products which added food additives containing natural radioactive substance, the potassium‑40.” [laughs]

That’s an official translation. This is interesting, because it’s naturally radioactive. There are people who worry about radioactive materials. There are people who want to inform the consumers more when it comes to radioactive materials.

There are also people who want to say that the potassium‑40 which occurs naturally gets processed by the body and gets out of the body quite quickly, and so it’s actually not the same as other kinds of radioactivity.

It’s both very technical, but also, a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which makes it much harder, traditionally, to deliberate. Previously, a deliberation of imported foods from Japan that are the nearby counties to a certain incident, that went absolutely explosive.

Although I didn’t participate in that deliberation, it was a traumatic experience for many public officials involved in food safety. The same bunch of people went now to the potassium‑40 conversation amidst the COVID‑19.

We wore face masks and used mostly only hand gestures to do the deliberation, which was broadcasted online, and so on. There was a pretty good blog by our colleague En-en Hsu that talks about how we change the framing the battle of scientific knowledge as experts, counter‑experts, to how to maximize consumer rights as the core issue.

We settled on the idea of maybe a QR code is actually best, and what should the QR code display? Even third‑party people can scan the same QR code, but display different ideas, based on the kind of app that they are developing in the social sector, and things like that.

People went creative, and it’s a, I think, the most successful radioactivity‑related deliberation in my memory.

Wow, OK. We only have 23 minutes left, I guess. We have to rush a bit. You don’t have more time, right? I’m already taking very much of your time.

Yeah, I’m going to the parliament. I guess continue to video conference over Skype is an option…

Don’t worry. Don’t worry. I’ll try to make it short and maybe you can try to make it short too. It’s all very interesting. One thing I thought was interesting, you had this proposal about caning? It was quite controversial.

Oh, yeah. Drunk driving, “drunk drivers should be caned”, that one.

We can talk about everything, right? Some people criticize…

Yeah. Later on the rule would change so that if it’s about foreign relations or national defense, then it’s not for the e‑petition platform to propose. This one, of course, it’s not unconstitutional. We did talk about it.

Physical violence is not unconstitutional.

I mean, there are, they exists certain jurisdictions that are signatories to the political and social rights at the UN Declarations, and they’re still practicing caning and arguing that it’s proportional as to the things like that.

While, of course, there are people who think physical violence of any kind is unconstitutional, the constitutional basis on which they say that can be discussed freely. It’s not like we’re going to change the law, because we’re not a lawmaking body.

The idea if they did it in a way that’s not broadcasting, and that is proportional, and that doesn’t lead to irreversible damage, it’s not very clear to me why it cannot be even discussed constitutionally.

They also have the death penalty.

Well, personally speaking…

…I would much spend my time deliberating acceptable alternatives to the death penalty, truth to be told. Just like potassium‑40, it’s a watered down version of the importing of Japanese foods. The caning is a watered down version of alternative to capital punishment.

You also said, everybody can propose regulation that is potentially against the law. Very interesting. Is that your, I think you said…

With the intent of changing the law, of course.

Yeah, of course.

So you are not just proposing against it, you’re proposing a vision. If you don’t have a better version in your mind, of course, you can’t just say, “Let’s abolish some random law for no good reason.”

One thing I was wondering and looking at all these different platforms, how is it different and maybe better from what other countries have like the petition system? 10 years ago, the Pirate Party in Germany, for example, started using this software, Liquid Democracy. How would you compare this…

…I participating in the translation effort…

Oh, yeah.

…back in 2013…

How would you…

…and later on, they would rewrite that in Haskell. Anyway, yeah.

I would say that mostly this is about the exploratory to discover and define by using common issues. The first diamond in the design thinking idea.

A lot of the previous designs focus on the second, which pits it as a substitute to traditional representative democracy. In our case, we’re just doing preparative work, so the other representative democracy works better. This led to much more adoption.

You also mentioned Switzerland as an example. I mean, I work for a Swiss newspaper, so it’s very interesting. Is there anything currently you’re looking at? How does it work in Switzerland or something or is that rather like a general example of course of direct democracy?

A general example, certainly, but we also look at, for example, how their referendum system is designed, and how people are wary of the electronic or over‑the‑distance part of that process.

We understand there’s a very long debate in Switzerland ongoing about distance version of it or electronic version of it. That’s the one. We do learn from those deliberations and that’s why we’re so conservative. [laughs]

We will only use electronic collecting like we do e‑collecting. We will soon do that for the referendum system, but it’s a long way between e‑collecting and e‑voting.

Of course. Let’s jump further. One detail, but I thought it was interesting of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t ask you that. On the Join website, you can sign in with a Facebook, Google, or Yahoo account. I thought it was…

Or just a regular email.

Of course, but these big tech companies, I thought it was quite interesting for a government website to basically collaborate with these big tech companies.

No, it’s just to get your email.

You don’t see any issue with it.

We just ask for your email. It’s not like we feedback your analytics information to Facebook. It’s not like that. It’s just a way to get your email.

Don’t you think Facebook and Google and Yahoo will get your information like, “OK. This guy logged in with this email address that time…”

Yeah, but just for one time. I’m not sure why it’s not a good idea for them to somehow know that this person has registered for the Join platform. It’s not like we are providing any other PIIs.

I would just say it’s none of Facebook’s business to know if I participate in a platform.

Yeah, we just use regular email. This is basically just for people who are using mobile phones. They don’t have to type in their email. It’s a convenience thing.

You think it’s the people’s responsibility, they know what they’re doing…

No. When I make this kind of registration processes, of course, we want to know that when we’re using the login API that we’re not giving out undue amounts of information to the commercial entities. In this case, this is just a pre‑fill in of their email address, avatar photo, and name, of which you can change anyway afterwards.

I really don’t think there is anything wrong. If we abuse the API access and, for example, when they do a countersignature, we post on their Facebook wall, of course, that will be a violation of trust. I’m not sure just copying these three readable information here once is such a big deal.

I’m not talking so much about your side of things, rather about these companies having information about their users when it comes to very basic participation and democracy, right?

They have the data that this person is interested in public participation. It is a behavior leak, but the behavior leak is minimal. I do not think that this will lead to a discrimination or bias, but if you have evidence saying that it would lead to a discrimination or bias, tell me and we’ll fix our process.

Next big topic that maybe you can give me the current state of affairs, Asian Silicon Valley. In the beginning that was one of your competencies.

I took out the “n,” actually. It’s Asia.

In the beginning it was Asian Silicon…

Yeah, yeah, and I took the n out.

And dot and…

I replaced the n with a dot.

What’s the current state of affairs? This doesn’t seem to have taken off, right?

ASV, it, obviously, have taken off. Our KPIs all worked and beyond we have imagined. We thought that we can build one exemplar digital education solution provider, and because of coronavirus, of course, there’s now 10, or something like that, of distance education providers.

We want to get two multinationals focusing on AIoT to invest to R&D lab in Taiwan. That was the original KPI, and now virtually everybody, including Microsoft people and so on, have done that, and so we exceeded that KPI by far.

The Microsoft relocation, and I think there was Facebook opening a center, their part actually of Asia Silicon Valley…

And Google. Google buying HTC’s mobile phone department was not part of ASVDA, we gladly take credit for that as well. [laughs] In any case…

I wasn’t aware.

The numeric KPIs around distance education, around large multinationals setting up research labs about system integrators connecting the semiconductor or whatever into a more vertically integrated solution providers of system integration that can provide, like Gogoro, a whole vertical integration to other countries.

More than 100 startups using the Startup Island and Talent Circulation and whatever, that has met as well. The startup community would be having more than five percent of the total GDP. These are literally the five numeric goals that ASVDA started with. We’ve done pretty well.

This label, ASV, do you still use it?

ASVDA? ASVDA?

It’s very hard to pronounce, so we don’t say that much anymore.

Maybe that’s why I…

If you go to ASVDA website, they actually show the Startup Island Taiwan as their primary banner. That’s some design work that they have done. For me, it’s great because it exemplify the double diamond. Literally, the logo is a double diamond.

Double diamond?

It’s the design thinking symbol, discover, define, develop, deploy, or deliver.

Let’s jump to the next question. There have been some cyber attacks, apparently, recently on the Taiwanese government.

Are you involved, not in the cyber attacks themselves but…

No.

…in how to tackle them.

Good to be on the record.

I don’t know. You can tell me.

No. I totally did not. [laughs]

Or on the government response side, are you involved in that?

No. I’m not part of the National Security Council. I’m not part of the national security team. My work is entirely on the general purpose policies. I don’t know any single case thing.

Of course, I helped communicating the whereabouts of investigation to journalists and things like that, but that’s the extent of it. I can serve as cultural translator, but I’m not a part of the prosecution team. I’m not part of the investigation team. Of course, I’m not party to any national security.

It’s quite funny because that seems to be your role often enough whenever it comes to digital topics. You serve, as you said, as a culture translator.

Translator. I can speak human language. [laughs]

You can speak which?

Human language.

Human language.

I can translate programming concepts into human language.

Which is rather a rare…

It’s quite useful.

…capability maybe. Internally, it’s still the perception maybe, at least for some people, that you’re in charge of many more things than you actually are, right?

I’m in charge of getting people’s attention to focus on important times, but I’m not in charge in any of them. This is my modus operandi.

For example, the Mask 1.0, the map, that was Howard Wu’s idea. As for Mask 2.0, that was Chi‑mai’s idea and implemented by Trade-Van, which was the company that did the tax filing software idea. On the 3.0, that was tested by the Taipei Smart City with Yallvend, the startup that did a vending machine. Then the convenience store came to me and said, “Yeah, we can do that too.” [laughs]

I didn’t decide on any single thing, but I made sure that all innovators get access to what every other innovators trying to tackling this problem. I am a cultural translator also internally for that, but I’m not in charge and certainly taking too much credit for what has transpired, especially during the coronavirus.

One minor question that maybe hopefully tells me more about how you work and perceive your…I want to say role, but I know you don’t like role.

No, it’s fine.

[laughs]

If you add a plural to it, it’s fine.

Roles.

Roles. [laughs]

You did do this video, how to use a rice cooker sterilizing masks.

You did it in German too. Why in German?

People ask.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. The German…I think it was the Hamburg Ministry of Foreign Affairs…I want to say embassy, but it’s not, right? Consulate. [laughs] That translated my speech to German. They know I can pronounce German even though I don’t understand what I’m saying. They just feed that text to me. I just say aloud.

Many other people in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs do that. They know if they have a piece of text they wanted me to say, I will say it.

You mean the Taiwanese consulate in Hamburg?

Yeah.

I was just like, “OK, that’s all nice, but I don’t think many Germans have rice cookers,” for example.

I do say that, if you have an electric one or electric oven, as long as you can heat it to 110 Celsius and for it to rapidly cool down, you can use it to revitalize this as well.

Very good. Quickly, your party politics.

Oh, yeah, which is to Can’t Stop This Party, very happy party.

Right. I get you don’t have any…

I’m just encouraging that party, but yes.

That kind of party, or?

No, that particular party, the unstoppable happy party, or literally, the Can’t Stop This Party. It’s a real party.

Where?

In Taiwan. They have a city councilor, actually.

Here in Taipei?

Here in Taipei, Froggy Chiu. Also, many of the more famous YouTubers, including Brian Tseng and Chih-Chyi Chang, many others, the EyeCTV guy, Retina, are party members too. They are a real party, a real political party.

OK, I didn’t know. You used to work for a KMT government, now a DPP?

“With”, thank you, but yes.

Sorry, yeah, with.

We had that discussion, sorry. Just ways of saying that slip out like that. I guess for you, it doesn’t change much, as long as you can do what you want and get your ideas through?

I’m just having fun.

It doesn’t really matter what kind of government you’re working with?

No, not at all. It seems people agree with me. There’s more non‑party‑ideologically‑affiliated people nowadays. People don’t seem to frame things in bipartisan, or whatever those terms, go away.

In parliament, there’s four different parties, and they each agree on very basic things, like open parliament. For the kind of thing that I’m doing, like the Open Government Partnership agenda and so on, I think pretty much every legislator would agree, which renders party politics a little bit moot for those topics.

Very interesting. We have five minutes left, so let’s just jump to some more personal questions, if you don’t mind.

Sure.

Maybe which question did nobody ever ask you?

What time is it?

25.

No, that question.

What do you mean, what time is it?

No journalist have ever asked me about the time.

Ah, what time is it? Sorry, OK.

Maybe something more interesting to you.

They’ve never asked me about the weather, either. [laughs] Anyway, more interesting personal questions?

Not only journalists, anybody.

Anybody. I guess nobody ever asked me how many lines of code do I still write every day, [laughs] or about my participation as a just normal civic hacker nowadays.

I’m not going to ask that question, because you already asked it.

Strangely, people never really ask about that.

Do you want to answer that one?

Sure. You can just look at my GitHub contributions [laughs] and know exactly how many lines…

Right. That’s maybe why nobody ever asks you.

Yeah, in five repositories, I created 59 commits in the Mask-Static, Feersum, Ethercalc… That’s why nobody asks me those questions, because these are public knowledge. It’s captured as part of my flow of work.

What’s your earliest childhood memory?

Maybe four years old?

What was it?

I was, I don’t know, remembering that my grandparents were discussing something with my doctor, a heart surgeon, I think, about the possibility of me surviving long enough to have a heart operation.

The doctor saying that, if the child grows up, there’s a 50‑50 chance ‑‑ I remember the words, “50‑50” ‑‑ that they will grow up to be fit for a surgery, after which it would be fine. There’s also a 50‑50 chance that that’s not going to happen.

That’s terrible.

It builds…

How did you…Sorry?

It builds character.

Yeah. Talking about building character, what other major influences, maybe from your childhood, your upbringing?

I remember reading about how Spartan people, throwing their children to the river or something like that. If they swam, they are fit for survival, and if they’re not fit, well, they are not fit for survival.

I remember my blood oxygen level as low as it was at that time, I was maybe four or five. There was no way I could have survived if I was in a Spartan community, as described by Plutarch.

Right. One question you get asked all the time, I just wanted to make sure it’s still the case. Your gender, your identity, you used to say your gender or whatever is…

Yup, my pronouns are whatever.

OK. I’m sorry to insist on it, it’s just interesting how it still interests people. I’m taking Chinese classes, and one of my teachers asked me, “Oh, so what are you doing currently as a journalist?’ And I said, “Yeah, I’m going to…

I’m interviewing Audrey.”

She said, “Oh, wow.” After our first meeting, she was like, “What does she look like? More like a man or a woman?”

It depends on the angle? [laughs]

Is that annoying to you?

Not at all.

It’s just how people are. They’re just curious.

I think it’s a great icebreaker. Don’t you think that?

Yeah. Do you think so?

Yeah. Of course it is a great icebreaker. If they’re identifying with any particular gender, I can talk about the adolescence they have in that gender.

Absolutely. There don’t seem to be many things that annoy you, but maybe you can name two or three.

Two or three annoying things?

Yeah. That really get on your nerves easily.

I think I already said three things during our conversations. For government, with government.

That kind of thing.

Asian Silicon Valley, Asia dot Silicon Valley. [laughs]

Right. Maybe something more significant.

These are significant things.

Working with government?

These are the core philosophical values. I really care about getting the concepts right, I guess.

If people keep referring me to as the IT Minister, the Japanese version of the title that they keep calling me, the IT Daijin… Well I respect the Japanese culture. I respect that they’re a constitutional monarchy, and I respect that they still have the idea of the minister as a vassal to the emperor, but that doesn’t describe a republic of citizens. [laughs]

My work, which is digital, consists mostly about people‑to‑people, and shared values, and the common good rather than IT, which would be the machinery that empowers the digital culture. It’s annoying that doesn’t go away, and I respect the Japanese people.

Interesting. Thank you. Just very quickly, to end, you do read a lot apparently. You talked a bit about that, but recently, what did you read?

My last book that I read, and I’m still reading is called “Data Democracy, at the Nexus of Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, and Knowledge Engineering.”

What do you get out of that?

I’m still reading that. First of all, I think the ideas of data democracy and data republic, that people are using these terms now in a kind of overlapping sovereignty as a given idea. Previously, it was data cooperatives instead of democracy, data coalition instead of republic because we don’t want to sound like we’re usurping sovereign nations.

Now, people are openly saying data democracy and data republic, which means that people’s idea of overlapping jurisdiction evidently has grown to a place where people who think about the data monopolies, and data tyrants, and things like that not only in a metaphorical sense, but they really ascribed a lot of what previously reserved to sovereign nations’ ideas into these multinational organizations of humanity.

Very interesting. Anything more leisurable?

This is leisure…

For you, it is?

Yeah, of course.

Let’s put it in another way…

If I’m reading it, that means it’s special.

Of course, because you always have fun in whatever you’re doing.

Yup.

Maybe some fiction?

Fiction?

Yeah.

I was just reminded of a fiction I read this morning in the apartment, called, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects.” It’s from Ted Chiang, the person who also wrote the original novel for the movie “Arrival,” I think.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects is a science fiction about software objects eventually gaining sentience, and a digital pet evolving to be a human‑equivalent mind.

Is it science fiction?

Yeah, it’s a science fiction…

Do you read a lot of science fiction?

Some.

You read “The Three‑Body Problem,” I think?

Of course.

What did you get out of that?

Dimensional reduction could be very beautiful.

What else do you do? I know you don’t make a difference between living and working. Maybe something else we don’t necessarily know about you, how you spend your time.

I work in the park. I put all my computing devices in that park, leaving only the smartphones in the place where I live.

Daan Park, is it?

No, the Social Innovation Lab. Within the C-Lab, which is a park now. We took down the walls. People literally just walk from the streets to play basketball or something and visit me for 40 minutes at a time. I’m working in very transparent ‑‑ I mean it physically ‑‑ fashion, where the two windows are totally transparent to people on the street.

Anyway, I work there. I put all my laptops there. I don’t have any computing devices other than the smartphones. Just today, I’m thinking about also leaving the smartphones in the two office spaces that I have, leaving only one feature phone in the place that I live, so that I would walk more and have less screen time and more to‑myself time rather than being disrupted.

It’s an open fact that being able to working remotely also means PERMA‑work, so I’m just gradually reducing my screen time.

Then let’s put it this way. If you don’t have screen time, what are you doing?

I’ll listen to music. Maybe use the whiteboard and draw things.

What kind of things?

…do poetry. Mind maps, mostly. Just sorting out ideas.

Music. You said you liked the “Hamilton” musical?

That’s hip‑hop. Yes.

Anything else recently, anything new?

I listen to music, not very intentionally. This is just a…

Background music.

…background. I like, for example, Eric Whitacre and the “Alleluia.” That was adapted from “October,” right? He first wrote October, which is instrumental, and the various versions of Alleluia. That’s one of the music I often play.

Even though I put all the smartphones to the Social Innovation Lab, which leaves only one feature phone, which is a Nokia 8110 4G version, which is “The Matrix” Neo version, the banana phone, that I will probably still play Alleluia or things like that using that phone.

Where do you live currently?

In the Xìnyì building, which is right across the Daan Central Park and about 15 minutes walk to Social Innovation Lab.

Very nice area. Why don’t you really like movies?

It’s just I don’t have too much time for that. If I can choose between movie and its transcript, [laughs] I will choose transcript all the time because I read transcript faster.

Do you do any sports?

Walking quickly, maybe. That’s it. Unless you consider e‑sport a sport… but anyway.

Do you do e‑sports?

Used to.

What kind of e‑sports?

It’s not real‑time though. I participated in the first few online versions of “Magic ‑‑ The Gathering” online play, which qualifies as intellectual sport. It was covered by ESPN. I was part of the world championship and the pro tour back in the day, Asia Pacific, in Tokyo, which I played to top eight or things like that, as a semi‑professional card game player at that time.

When it became online, I also participated in the Magic Suitcase or Apprentice, many software that transform that card‑based game into an online‑based game, which would be e‑sport. ESPN seem to think that. It’s turn‑based. It’s not real‑time e‑sport.

Do you own any bitcoins anymore?

I had a bitcoin wallet. I throw out the private key when I became digital minister.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Why?

In my public declaration of interests, I don’t want there to be a way to anonymously give me money. I have said very publicly that I’ve never contained in my wallet any bitcoin ‑‑ and you can check that ‑‑ and I am throwing out the private key.

There are different numbers concerning your IQ. What is it really?

I literally don’t know.

Where does that number of 180, 160 come from?

WAIS peaks at 160, above which it has a small asterisk saying that it doesn’t know, so I don’t know.

You never did a test or something?

I did multiple tests, but I don’t know, because there’s that little asterisk. [laughs]

If you hear 180, then that’s centimeter. That’s a misnomer.

[laughs] That’s your…

That’s my height, literally. [laughs]

Maybe a stupid question, but what is it like to be so intelligent?

I have no idea.

You must be bored by a lot of people, right? Including myself, and I’m not saying this ironically.

Not really. Anybody with a phone with the right app on it can pass wave three with flying colors, meaning that IQ is testing some of the least important thing in modern society. I am not bored.

You talk very quickly, for example. You get your ideas through very quickly. You talk very precisely, for example. Most other people don’t, so that’s a difference already.

Well, you do.

No, I don’t think so.

You do this probably for a living. [laughs]

Right, but my job is rather to ask questions and not so much to talk.

Sure. No, I enjoy talking, of course. I enjoy listening to people too. Whether people talk fast or slow, I am fine. I don’t get bored if I have to speak slowly or carefully.

I just felt, and no offense. I have no problem with that at all. No personal feelings or anything. Again, last week in our interview, I was a bit slow sometimes. I hadn’t slept well. I was a bit tired. Anyways.

Oh, really?

Anyways, you sometimes seemed a bit impatient. Maybe that’s not due to your intelligence or anything. Maybe you understood quicker what I wanted to say than I did myself. [laughs]

You answered sometimes right away, before I even had to ask my question, I would say. Is that typical of you, would you say?

I would say it’s a little bit of psychological projection, I guess, on your part.

Maybe. Maybe it is.

You began the first interview saying, “Just so that it’s clear. You’re not frustrated with why am I talking about this.” Which kind of assumes that I will get bored or frustrated… but I was not.

I guess I find it a little bit funny, that why would you consider those questions, those are excellent questions, to be boring?

Maybe I answered a little bit more quicker than I previously did, as I want to assure you that this doesn’t bore me. You have my undivided attention.

No, just curious. I’m just asking anything that I think might be interesting. Very well.

You still must be bored sometimes. You’ve done this kind of interview hundreds of times by now, right?

Mm‑hmm. I’m not bored. 1,300 times, if you count this one.

Pretty crazy.

No, I don’t think that the people who perform “Hamilton” are bored. They do it every night, and still, I don’t think they are bored.

Right, yeah. Just thinking about you and reading even more about you, and how you left school when you were quite young already and stuff like that, Greta Thunberg came to my mind. I guess you admire her. You mentioned her a few times. Do you see any parallels between her and you?

I guess both of us don’t get limited by what the society treats 15‑years‑olds. That’s, I think, the obvious connection.

Which in Taiwan at that time must have been quite something, right?

Of course, yeah.

You studied here, and many Taiwanese people, they study abroad as well. Apparently, it seems to be something you do.

I studied on the Internet.

Yeah, which is abroad as well, right?

It is abroad… it’s the great beyond.

You didn’t feel the urge to go…

That’s why I think in English, because to be online all the time, you naturally think in English, and with no accent. I tend to pick up the accent very easily, because I don’t have a native accent. It’s just letters on the screen for me.

You never felt the urge to go to Cambridge or wherever, like many Taiwanese do, apparently?

I did go to Cambridge and I did go to Oxford, and I worked with the Oxford University Press on dictionaries. For me, going there is just to work with people there. If I go and study, of course, I do it for the study, not for the degree.

I, of course, think universities are great if you want to get to the bottom of things. I never see a degree or a diploma as useful.

Maybe very last question. I’ve used enough of your time. One of my Chinese teachers told me that actually many Taiwanese who are creative, like the founder of Foxconn, for example, they weren’t very good in school, apparently.

They didn’t fit into the system, the way you didn’t, apparently. Would you say that’s true, and would you say this kind of educational system is actually a big opportunity for people like you to stand out even more?

Sure. This whole notion of having alternative experimental education is just to give such room, as you describe it. By now, the law is such that up to 10 percent of students in Taiwan can prescribe their own curriculum to themselves.

For example, there are indigenous schools, experimental ones, that tries to build their curriculum as making sure that they learn their indigenous language first, then English, and skipping kanji altogether or bopomofo altogether.

That previously wasn’t even legal. Thanks to alternative education, experimental education, up to 10 percent of the student can do so. I am probably generation zero of experimental education.

I am, of course, part of public hearings and so on that led to eventually the law about alternative education. I am also part of the curriculum committee that have then took this idea into the K to 12 curriculum, which starting last year, have the right to experiment also locally within their institutional limits with experimental schools, the community colleges, and so on.

Now, there is a spectrum of fluidity of how students can co‑determine their curriculum, while the new curriculum was co‑examined by student representatives also.

So, yeah, it is essentially the story of the alternative becoming the norm nowadays.

Right. OK, thank you very much.

Thank you.