OK, be well. Bye-bye.

OK, wonderful. Thank you so much. It was so nice to make a first contact with you, and really appreciate your help.

We’ll finish up by Friday. I’ll just email you any questions that I have before then. If you could send me a copy of your transcript, that’d be awesome.

Interesting. All right, I think I basically got what I needed. How long are you in the US, just so I’ll know what time zone you’re on for any fact-checking?

Do you think distributed technology could basically supplant the need for regulation in the sense that, if you have truth emerging in a decentralized way, you don’t need to regulate big tech, or do you think you still do?

The UberX example, is that documented somewhere that I could look at, just for detail?

That would be great. That would be great.

Could I ask you just a couple more questions? Is there a good example that you could cite within Taiwan of a social issue, a political issue, in which there seemed to be polarization, but actually, when you used various techniques – ledgers, quadratic voting, whatever it was – that ...

I’m arguing that in the US, we should try and think bottom-up. I’m curious if you have thoughts on that, both economically, but politically, how that might help enable you to continue to foster liberal democracy in the shadow of the PRC.

Exactly. One of the things, I’ve argued this more in an economic context. I’ve looked at, say, the way that the US is trying to think about tech regulation, versus how the PRC is structuring its innovation economy, and it seems very top-down in the PRC.

OK, no worries.

How do you think these technologies are going to impact Taiwan’s ongoing political evolution in relation to mainland China?

There’s that, and then there’s also who’s going to get it, who’s going to get it fastest.

OK, brilliant. Just to go back to your point about broadband, in the US right now, broadband has become a hugely political issue. 5G has become an incredibly political issue. How could using collaborative technologies fix that in the US, do you think?

Wow. That’s interesting. I know you mentioned Occupy as a turning point, but what was it? You talked about 10 million out of 23 participating. Was there a particular watershed moment, and to what do you credit that?

[laughs] That’s a nice campaign slogan. “If you don’t have broadband, it’s my fault.”

When you’re thinking about your own demonstrated impact, what would you cite? What would you put on that list?

What is necessary for data coalitions to form, do you think? What’s the needed ingredient?

One practical question. When I refer to the technologies that you’re using to facilitate the democracy, should I just basically say distributed ledger tech? What else should I throw in the mix?

Say more about that.

Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing in the context of what’s going on in China with the coronavirus. What do you think? If these tools were actually in effect in mainland China, what do you think would have happened? What would have been done differently?

That’s interesting. Having worked in the US around these issues, what do you think that topic would be?

To what extent do you think that what you do is replicable in a country, say, as large as the US, in European countries? Where are the synergies, and where are the challenges, do you think?

Our audience is pretty non-technical. If I were going to try and explain to them what were the breakthrough moments when doing what you do – which is using technology to basically facilitate liberal democracy – what were the turning points that allowed that to happen, would you say?

Can you tell me a little bit more, or is there another link where I can read about the way in which you get people together to contribute online news and use that crowd model?

Tell me when did you start as digital minister, and if you can maybe give me one or two examples of the way in which this sort of more representative ideas around democracy merged with the technology that actually enabled that to happen in a real way?

Actually I would agree with that. [laughs]

Maybe we can back way up. I’d like to get some of your own history, and how you came to be interested in these technologies, how you got involved with the political side of things, with Occupy, etc. Just give me your background, and then we’ll go from there.

Actually, if you share the transcript with me, that’ll be great. I’m taking notes, but I can make sure I’ve got all your quotes right.