For anyone concerned about the current global state of Democracy, which should be everyone, Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s Digital Minister, may be our greatest hope:

“I’m not here to make citizens transparent to government, I’m here to make government transparent to citizens.”

She has flipped Big Brother, proving that this very same unprecedented internet connectivity can be harnessed to cultivate and manifest the very best of us as well — connecting instead of isolating, confirming truths instead of spreading lies, distributing power instead of consolidating it, co-creating solutions with millions of citizens in real time.

Very much due to Audrey’s work, Taiwan shot from 31st to 11th on the Economist’s Global Democracy Index to become a “Full Democracy,” and Asia’s most advanced democracy. At the same time, the U.S. dropped from 8th to 25th, now a “Flawed Democracy,” also due very much to one man.

So perhaps first take a moment to review the Show Notes, or a least read through some of her quotes at the very bottom. We list stories and ideas as they appear in the discussion. If you get familiar with the references, the podcast will be that much richer for you.

Here’s a foundational story, how she started down this road. During the 2014 Sunflower Revolution in Taipei, students and dissidents peacefully occupied the Taiwan Yuan, or parliament, for 22 days protesting a trade deal with mainland China, or the PRC. Audrey flew in from Silicone Valley, borrowed a laptop, plugged into 300 meters of ethernet cable, and connected over 500,000 citizens and over twenty NGOs in a real-time dialogue towards what she would ultimately call “rough consensus.” The demonstration won the day and resulted in a new trade agreement, very much due to Audrey’s remarkable and unprecedented real-time connectivity. The students remained completely peaceful throughout and respectfully cleaned up the parliament before they left, unlike other Congressional occupations of late. Powerful people in Taiwan’s conservative government took note of what Audrey was doing, and called her in to talk… and so it began…

I’ve listened to this interview countless times while editing, and I’m still hearing new things, both with the technology and her philosophy. So the odds are she’s going to just lose you a few times, often because you’re considering the last thing she said, missing the next. So here are two quick shorthands for each.

Per tech, virtually everything referred to, from distributed and polycentric ledgers to multi-dimensional spaces to reverse accountability, assures transparency, and empowers citizens, inspiring openness, real-time interaction, and the deployment of people’s different viewpoints. It all encourages plurality as a way to demonstrate, as she puts it, “our shared values are hiding in plain sight.”

And her philosophy, from calling herself a “post-gender, conservative anarchist” to Lao Tzu and Taoist, especially about wu-wei (see below), are about cycling and returning power and voice to citizens, re-energizing the deepest, most fundamental precept of democracy: Power to the People.

Show Notes:

“Contact Tracing:” We reference this pivotal moment throughout the podcast. Audrey’s Covid contact tracing program powered Taiwan to 223 consecutive days during the dark heart of it without a single locally transmitted covid case. Zero. Three amazing things happened here. First, Audrey was able to create a real-time tracing system that protected people’s identities and private information. Second, she was able to convince the government this was true. Third, the people of Taiwan trusted them and used it. So while we were locked down and bleaching our broccoli, life in Taiwan continued normally, with outdoor concerts etc. As Audrey observed, “Contact tracing illustrates the false choice between privacy and public safety.”

Vulcan IDIC: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations”

“Good enough Ancestor:” In addition to Chinese ancestor traditions, she references the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Seventh Generation philosophy where decisions need to consider their effects seven generations hence. So to be a “good enough ancestor” means not to lock down or set in concrete all processes and systems, but to leave space for future generations to improve or modify.

Audrey Tang’s Job Description: Audrey was asked to write her own job description. As a “poetician,” this is what she wrote:

“Where we see an internet of things, let’s make it an internet of beings
Where we see a virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality
Where we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning
Where we see user experience, make it a human experience
When we think a singularity is near, always remember the plurality is here.”

Tianamen Square: Audrey’s father spent nearly a month at Tiananmen Square as a journalist, an event that contributed to the direction of Tang’s life.

Mykhailo Fedorov is the Minister of Digital Transformation in Ukraine. He’s accomplished amazing things in transitioning the government’s Diaa and social platform Telegram to a war footing.

Diia is an app created by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. The word means action in Ukrainian, and the app makes a critical array of government and health documents digital and readily accessible on citizens’ smartphones. This is incredibly valuable to refugees fleeing a war zone.

The Sunflower Student Movement was a protest against the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) that was passed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Students and dissidents peacefully occupied Taiwan’s Parliament for 22 days. During that time, Audrey flew back from Silicon Valley, borrowed a laptop, and went on to create an ongoing, real-time dialogue with 500,000 citizens and 20 NGOs towards a “rough consensus” that led to a successful, peaceful resolution.

Taiwan’s White Terror was the violent imposition of martial law on Taiwan by the KMT from 1949 to 1987. The point here, as with the 228 Massacre, is that Audrey grew up in an authoritarian regime. She points out that both democracy and the internet arrived at about the same in 1996, so it was “natural to conflate them.”

The 228 Massacre was a Taiwanese uprising in 1947 that was violently suppressed by the KMT resulting in between 18,000 and 28,000 Taiwanese deaths.

Bylaws not inlaws/local matriarchal tribes: Gay marriage seems like a zero-sum situation, yes or no. But learning from an indigenous, matriarchal Taiwanese people, Audrey helped focus on and clarify the issues that really mattered to citizens, resulting in a successful compromise where gay marriage became a legal entity but did not compel family marriage traditions to follow suit. It worked.

Non-binary people do not identify exclusively with either a male or female gender.

Transgender, or Trans for short, is a broad term that can be used to describe people whose gender identity is different from the gender they were thought to be when they were born.

Decentralized and Distributed Ledgers: These are indeed different, with decentralized a subset of distributed, and there’s a lot of hype here, but as Audrey noted, they are under the hood with almost everything she does, not to mention blockchains for Bitcoin, smart contracts etc. etc. There’s a ton of articles and YouTubes about this; research “Proof of Work” and Proof of Stake” to get more into it. But the key concepts here are:

Traditionally most transactions depended on a singular, central, third party to act as intermediaries and subsequently hold the gospel information in a single place, like your bank, a title company, credit union etc.; this is a “centralized ledger.” However, this gives this third party a lot of power. Distributed ledgers eliminate this middle man, and by creating a platform that only involves the relevant stakeholders, all of whom have visibility (and power to update, depending…). Power and visibility are “distributed” to and held by the stakeholders.
Per security, traditional ledgers were like informational Fort Knoxes: all the gold is in one place, everyone knows it so layers of security surround it while hackers hack their way in. When successful, hackers create havoc with massive data breaches etc. However, when the information is distributed all across the network, with everyone seeing it, there’s no single database to hack, and therefore due to it’s openness, very secure.
Polycentric ledgers (and governance), refers to situations where a number of different entities, systems, communities, legislatures etc. all hold partial authority over a given decision, where each is incentivized to resolve the given issue.

Audrey calls the old system “Security by Obscurity,” and this notion of radical openness and transparency, and the almost counter-intuitive security this brings, runs through virtually all her thoughts and processes.

Git is free and open-source software that tracks changes in any set of files, used primarily for programming with a team. Along with “copyleft,” “AGPL licenses” and most every computer language or platform Audrey references, it has to to with transparency, openness, or further evolving capabilities

Zeitgeist is the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

G0v Zero (with a “Zero” instead of the letter “0,” an anarchist pun…): Audrey designed this government website to make government information more easily available, understandable and in real time. It is used on a regular basis by millions of Taiwanese.

Nina Jankowitz: an expert in misinformation, she was tapped to head up Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board.” It was a highly specified role which included making sure, in real time, that FEMA information during disasters was accurate; where to find food, shelter etc. Her nomination was derailed by disinformation, thus ending perhaps the first effort in the U.S. to address disinformation.

Uber X and AirBnB Issues: Like gay marraige in Taiwan, the introduction of these commercial innovations seemed headed for a zero-sum, yes/no confrontation. Audrey’s methods and programs created a platform for real-time dialogue, “co-creating” and collaboration so that all stakeholders were heard and a compromise was reached. It was another stepping stone that enabled Audrey to keep “widening the corridor” for the application of direct, digital democracy.

Non-Partisan Politicians is a trend in Taiwan fascinating in its own right, referring to an increasing number of candidates not identifying with any party:

Taoism/Lao Tzu/Wu Wei: In the Chinese language, wu has the connotation of nothingness, and wei refers to action; it points towards the idea that you can accomplish much more by being in harmony with the Tao than by forcing things. Wu wei originated in Confucianism, becoming an important concept in Chinese statecraft and then to Taoism. Lao Tzu is author of the “Tao Te Ching,” a core Taoist treatise. Wu wei deeply informs Audrey’s approach to the“mysterious power” that she channels so effectively.

Grandmother ATM story: This points towards the tightrope that Audrey has to walk in respect to her idea of bringing technology to where people live, not forcing them into technological spaces. Although expanding the existing ATM bank system to become more versatile and streamlined was the cleanest technical route, Audrey’s grandmother simply didn’t trust these new applications. So Audrey found another way. This points to the next show note about striving to write “code to the data.”

Data to the Code (bad) vs Code to the Data (good): Overall, this says that each situation, each person, has its own organic specifics. Facebook is an example of data to the code. Facebook has pre-fabricated slots where you enter your personal data, preferences, relationship status with others etc. Code to the data rejects the idea of pre-set categories for people to adapt to. Like the ATM story above, you first go where people live, the existing norms, understand those specifics, then write code to their data.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and Transparency in Taiwan: Near a presidential election, Audrey and her ministry met with these and other large social network platforms to ask them for transparency about how money was flowing into their respective organizations vis a vie election information. Facebook at first was the only to comply, but then the others did.

Two marvelous things about this story:

Of course these platforms can divulge where their money is coming from. Jon Stewart had a beautiful quote about the SCOTUS 5-4 decision to allow dark money into U.S. political campaigns: “It’s encouraging that only five people in the U.S. believe that dark money is good for our democracy. Unfortunately those five people are on the Supreme Court.”
True to form, Audrey didn’t have to use any force or takedown threats. She simply pointed out that Taiwanese had come to demand this kind of transparency, and both Taiwanese people and the press would both start hammering on them. She just laid out the truth of the situation and the platforms ultimately complied.

Administrative takedown: Twitter banning Trump is an example of such a takedown, where a website, a youtube, or a platform abuser like Trump is simply removed, or taken down. Audrey has been able to avoid such takedowns.

R Number (not to be confused with R-value which measures a material’s insulating ability) is the number of people that one infected person will pass on a virus to, on average. Here, we use it to compare which spreads more quickly, moral outrage content or funny stuff. See our podcast with Thi Nguyen about the contagion of moral outrage.

Raku movement: Raku (and Rakudo) is a recent evolution of the incredibly versatile Perl programming language, Perl 6. Perl has been called the “Swiss Army Chainsaw Language,” as well as the “glue that holds the internet together.” Audrey created the Perl Six “Pugs project,” a platform inviting other programmers to explore the possibilities of RAKU moving forward, all towards her goal of increasing online versatility, ease of use and responsiveness for citizens. The Perl community plays Perl golf (who can write a given code using the fewest keyboard strokes), writes Perl poetry and has Perlmonks. Of course it’s more than just “open source;” subsequent innovations anyone makes to the code must be open moving forward as well.

Pink Mask story: A young schoolboy lamented that his school ran out of blue face masks (for boys) so he had to wear a pink one and the other kids made fun of him. Audrey caught wind of this, and in the spirit of responding in real-time to new data, the next day Taiwan’s President and cabinet appeared at a press conference all wearing pink masks. Now pink masks are cool and the schoolboy is the cool kid and everyone wants pink masks. As Audrey points out, Taiwan’s citizens clearly understood that masks were effective. It became fashionable to collect all ten or so colors and types to match their outfits. In the U.S. wearing a mask was interpreted by many as a forced mandate to chaff against.

Polis Hi dimensional spaces: Polis is a U.S. company that Audrey works with to create the actual platforms where millions of people can input their preferences and opinions towards “rough consensus.” Their motto: “Input crowd, output meaning.” The notion of multi or high dimensional spaces refers to the idea that a single person has many aspects, preferences, belongs to a number of communities etc., so that where two people appear to oppose each other on a single issue, on other issues they are very close. Combined with quadratic voting and funding processes (see below), Polis platforms optimize these positive alignments. As Audrey says, “Our shared values are hiding in plain sight.”

Sybil Attack: A type of attack on a computer network service in which an attacker subverts the service's reputation system by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a disproportionately large influence. It is named after the subject of the book Sybil, a case study of a woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.

Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul: Very simply, Web1 was static; you searched and found pages with info. Web2 was participatory; you entered info on Facebook, left comments on Yelp etc. Web3, still very much in progress is, of course, decentralized (Google controls everything on Google: that would end), hopes to involve AI so that it’s much more responsive to ideas, will understand words, and so a “read, write and execute Web.”

Reverse Procurement: Citizens bring ideas and solutions to the government, as opposed to solutions by government fiat. Audrey established several successful pathways for citizens to manifest solutions through government, including their annual Presidential Hackathon, school competitions, and a petition processes where anyone who gets 5000 or more signatures on an idea gets a face to face meeting with the relevant cabinet member. The “winning” ideas are almost always immediately funded and often executed within weeks.

Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term meaning "humanity". It is sometimes translated as "I am because we are" (also "I am because you are"), or "humanity towards others.” With Audrey, the context is that in the ongoing dance between individuals and society, as one gets stronger, so does the other, on and on. So as citizens get empowered, society becomes more empowered, as in the Facebook/Twitter/Google story above.

William Gibson is a science fiction writer whose genre-transforming 1984 novel “Neuromancer” imagined people literally jacking into a sophisticated cyberspace. It’s considered a major influence on “The Matrix” films.

Manuel Castell: He is a renown sociologist, author of “The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture” and currently Spain’s “Minister of Universities.” His envisioned “network society” is “a society whose social structure is made up of networks powered by micro-electronics-based information and communications technologies.” This communication realm is the social space where power is decided.

Memetics is used to describe the ways that an idea could successfully propagate without necessarily implying the idea is factual.

The United Nations’ Seventeen Sustainable Goals

Cambridge Analytica was the “psychographics” company that gained notoriety through the successful Brexit campaign that intently listened to all available social media, then crafted an emotion-based, as opposed to a fact and issue based, strategy. Here Audrey references them as a caution about the “Big Brother” aspects to the notion of intensive listening. Their involvement with both Brexit and the Trump campaign remains controversial. As said in the movie “Brexit,” “we know that you’ve fallen out of love with someone before you do.”

A Trim Tab is a very important, wu-wei type concept for our title “Steering the Wind.” Attached on an airplane wing or outer surface, it’s a very small, adjustable tab or airfoil, where very slight movement results in consequential changes in the plane’s direction. Audrey is a trim tab.

Quadratic Voting is a method of voting in which a person votes not just for or against an issue, but also expresses the degree of their preference.

Quadratic Funding is a method of funding wherein bigger donors will match donations in projects where there are a large number of individual contributors instead of matching generous contributions from single donors. So the number of people donating takes precedence over the amounts.

Reverse Accountability is all about government transparency and two-way visibility. During Covid, for example, if the disease were detected and therefore a person’s location data became activated, that citizen could then see exactly who had access to their data, who was looking.

Misinformation is incorrect and misleading information whereas Disinformation is intentional and malicious false information meant to deceive.

A Few Quotes:

“Our shared values are hiding in plain sight.”

“We are creating a resilient ideascape. We always manage to find innovations that capture the common values out of different positions, and that I think is the true vision of sustainability, of working for the benefit of homo sapiens seven generations down the line because that’s what matters. What doesn’t matter are the zero-sum games that people play at this present moment with their own viewpoint. We benefit from these plural viewpoints.”

“…otherwise it’s like meeting at a nightclub; everyone has to shout to be heard.”

“How to negotiate with a virus of the mind? Thinking together is the vaccine”.

“The Collective is immune to divisive campaigns.”

“In addition to lowering the barriers to democracy, this approach is also a process of mutual understanding. When the public sees the results of collaboration, it leads to more participation. Only through this cycle will it be possible for citizens to provide concrete feedback and go even further by applying, adjusting and contributing to the civic tech community.”

Audrey identifies as “post gender, conservative anarchist.” When challenged that she couldn’t work for government and call herself an anarchist, she replied: “I don’t work for the government, I work with the government. And I don’t work for the people, I work with the people. I never tell anyone to do anything.”

“People often ask me about the future of democracy. To me, democracy’s future is based on a culture of listening. Taiwan has no ‘legacy systems’ of representative democracy and the internet is highly developed. This means we can experiment with new modes of democracy. As President Tsai Ing-wen said at her inauguration three years ago: ‘Before, democracy was a showdown between two opposing values. Now, democracy is a conversation between many diverse values.’”

“Can we scale this process of listening?”

“The island of Taiwan is about 400km (250 miles) long, a journey of less than two hours by high-speed rail. This has proved a major advantage in deploying internet connectivity. The idea of broadband as a human right is at the core of the government’s policy. Some 87% of people over the age of 12 are connected. For a population of 23m, the internet is even more natural as a public space for discussion than the practice of voting.”

“Thus, it is imperative that the government, the tech community and companies come together to form a collaborative ecosystem to amplify the impact of civic technology: code can support democratic values in a way that wasn’t previously possible.”

Show Notes:

More LINKS:

A Few Quotes: