We appreciate it.

All right. Thank you so much.

Could you walk in again and sit down again and then walk out without talking?

Yeah. You can actually take a coffee…

Then last thing, could you stand up, walk away this way and come back and sit down again, and walk away again.

That was a beautiful way of ending the conversation, I think. Let’s take a room tone for 20 seconds. Everybody quiet, please.

They all will take part, you mean?

Beautiful. We need to come to an end, last question. What is your dream? If you could wish for the future you would love to see, what would be there, what do you see? What would digital democracy be like? If you could dream.

It could also mean if there’s a very strict community like not accepting any positive freedom of people.

People don’t abuse it? This power?

We done. Good.

Is this also valid for the digital public sphere? Let’s wait for the beep, beep, beep we have in one moment.

Also what surprised me so much is there is no police on them. I couldn’t almost even see any police. What is the secret behind that? Why is them not necessary, obviously?

How much have you kept your hacker way of life and your hacker way of thinking in your everyday life as a part of the government today, in being a minister today?

Yeah, you are right. Maybe in a broader sense, what role does…you already talked about that, but let’s sum it up again. Why is information and the constant flow of information and the accessibility of information so crucial for a participatory democratic society?

Can you explain, again, you said there is a certain parallel between you’re dealing with the airboxes here and the telex machines, which were distributed to the manufactories taking data in real time. Real time was a bit “back then.”

In a way. That made us curious if you see any parallel there.

Then the idea was to use all the information coming in as a constant feedback…

Do you see any meaning to discuss that? Do you see any parallel? It was a completely different society, was a society run by a socialist government, but what interested us a lot was this utopia of having a constant flow of information. We had a very decentralized…You had all ...

Have you heard of it?

Another nine minutes. Maybe shortly, you already mentioned that you’re not too familiar with this experiment in the ‘70s.

That makes you optimistic that it’s the more clever form of governance based on decentralized data?

What makes you optimistic that people not one day accept all the forms of control from the government because they like so much all the comfortable services they can use provided by these companies, which accept the censorship and all the repression?

At the same time, the model, how to treat data of People’s Republic of China, and all the successful companies from China, like TikTok for example, is popular in Europe. There is Weibo and there’s Alibaba and all these shiny examples.

Cool. OK, continue.

I have two people say that Google has all the big data about me. Do you mean your personal traces you leave on Google or you mean data in general?

I think it’s important to highlight the difference because people are often confused and take it for the same.

Yes, it was a long question so you can maybe…

There’s this fear of where is data? Data can also be abused. What is your take on that? How do you protect the data? In which way are we talking about personal data or is this a really completely different data?

People could hearing you talk about what important role data play in society. Here, people could take get it wrong and understand that all this data can easily be abused in a moment when…I don’t know and nobody wants that, but the worst case scenario, the People’s Republic of China ...

I think in a lot of cases when in Europe, people talk about data that it reflects immediately. People will only take a few seconds and then there is the example of China, the People’s Republic of China, controlling the data and if using it, using it against the people. ...

So many inspiring things. You mentioned already the authoritarian regime and we can’t miss to at least shortly talk about the fact that you are in the midst of a cyber war. Can you explain to maybe audiences in Europe? We’re not so familiar with the situation here. You get ...

How far can this lead? Can all these digital tools and all the participation lead to a completely different society? What is the impact all this can have? Are you reluctant to say this will change the world or will this have…If this exists in full blown version one day, ...

Wow. [laughs] I think this is already maybe also connected to the maker’s culture, which I heard you talked about often, but it goes further even. What is behind maker’s culture and what does that mean?

You’re right. Let’s start with airbox. How do you empower people to work with data?

Data should be free and accessible, but then also how do you enable people to work with the data? I think it’s sometimes like the step which is missing in at least in Germany, even if they can download their data, like their personal data from Google or something, they ...

People own the data, as much as possible, or that is at least the goal, right? People should own or not own the data, but have access to the data. Is that the point? That is much better, I guess.

Let’s have a short break, so you can take a bit off the mask sweat off. It’s getting warm in here.

OK.

Let’s stay a little bit longer with your forms of participation. I also heard about census. About the air quality in Taipei, right? Can you explain this example, please?

You have a very optimistic take on that.

It’s still pretty hard to imagine how something like this, like publicly designed parks, can be also applied on the digital sphere where a lot of the infrastructure is already in the hands of big corporations. Can it be turned back? Can we reconquer the digital sphere? Are you optimistic ...

That was a very specific question of mine. Let’s maybe get back to talking in rather broader terms. Asking a bit about your general attitude towards all that. In which way do people sometimes run platforms better than corporations? Or why is it better for society that platforms or maybe ...

No, it’s good. Everybody knows it.

Wow. Listening to you telling me all about all these examples of how actually people run all that it brings the question up to my mind like, can also platforms like Amazon, for example, be run by people instead of corporate one day in future?

Running

Then let’s continue, like with your description of how you handled COVID here. David, you also sometimes through the hands.

Can you maybe explain what PTT is?

Another really impressive example was your way to deal with COVID. I think part of it was to have a very tight feedback loop. I heard about the masks and how you dealt with the availability of masks. Can you describe what you did?

Wow. Why do you think people are so motivated to take part in all these decisions? From my perspective, in Germany, people are really passive in those things. They believe, “Actually, I don’t think anything will change at all if I take part or not, so why even do so?” ...