I imagine you’ve seen…you probably remember it from before, like last year?
That’s right.
I’m basically very new to the re:public. I just joined a month ago. I was in IAAC. Have you heard about it?
How do you spell it?
Vaguely, vaguely.
Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia?
Yeah, but I didn’t know what it stands for.
Mainly I was in Fab Lab Barcelona, with Tomas Diez and others like him.
Yeah, I’ve heard of these people but we haven’t worked together on a project.
Actually, I saw you virtually for the first time on a IAM conference.
That’s right, using the gauze projection.
Exactly. Actually, by accident, I brought this one today. It’s from IAM, and the founder is one of our friends as well.
Awesome.
Today, I first, wanted to bring you our magazine. It’s for the moment. We just published it probably two…no, three months ago. By the way, do you mind recording?
Go ahead.
The main title is Able City, so cities where it enables many things to happen. That’s why we have collected many cases from basically around the world. The main content is mainly about Barcelona, also because I was there. The small book is in English, but the main one is…
But they are the same content?
Yeah. It’s all the same. There we talk about this Fab city movement by Tomas Diez and also Green FabLab, where they try to experiment with the technology in the environment, nature. Also, we have interviewed to several people in Amsterdam as well, like Mattijs in Hackable City.
Dyne.org also?
Probably not this time. Actually, this is like a second topic I like to speak, but we’re also thinking of doing a second edition here in Taiwan. Maybe I will explain to you later about this second edition things.
Sure. In any order you prefer.
I think first if you don’t mind, could you explain me briefly about the PDIS and general structures?
PDIS is Public Digital Innovation Space. The space is both online and on land. We don’t have underwater science yet, nor in space.
Physically, this is my office, the Social Innovation Lab, which is part of the larger Contemporary Culture Lab. It’s a space that used to be Air Force headquarters around two years ago.
We support all social entrepreneurs, meaning people making innovations to empower the public, but also invites participation from the public to hear. We just brainstormed. At that time only one room was functional, and nobody used this space.
We have only one meeting room available, and the basement was flooded to the knees. Not a happy time. [laughs]
In that time, we constantly talked to a bunch of social innovators around Taiwan and co-created this space for mutual benefit, and so not just for people in Taipei. I think the number one consensus was that we are to have a cafe, a open kitchen, a dedicated chef in a place where you can live stream the cooking to people. That’s the number-one priority.
That space?
Yeah. That’s the cafe. It’s the cafe. The second priority is that it has to open every day from early morning until 11:00 PM. The space is provided for free, for anyone working on any sustainable development goals, so that people can mingle after their activities. That’s the second one.
The third thing is that because I was facilitating a conversation every week, and then seeing it’s such a good idea. I will stay here every week for office hours. I’m here in all Wednesdays obviously, because today is not a Wednesday, but it’s more for pre-book meetings.
On Wednesdays, literally anybody can walk in and claim a chunk of my time and then talk. It’s a open space designed to host policy-making across sectors. Every other Tuesday or so, I tour around Taiwan to especially reach people who don’t have a high-speed rail station. It makes it harder for them to reach me.
I talk to the elders, in both senses, in indigenous lands in the more rural areas, in offshore islands and so on. Because in Taiwan we have broadband as human right, no matter where you’re on the top of the Yu-Shan Jade Mountain or on the Pacific island of Dongsha, you have to make a visit for a second, acknowledge, “It’s not your problem. It’s my fault.”
We have 98 percent coverage on all the rural and indigenous places. When I go there, I don’t go alone. I set up a Zoom video conference and bring all the 12 ministries related to their issues in a virtual conversation. They proved to be so useful that not only people in Taipei – the national government – joined, but now also people in Taichung, Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, Taitung, and Douliu.
Virtually, this means that we build a rapport between the local co-ops, social entrepreneurs, and so on. I often live there, stay for a night or two, to mingle with them, to understand their local conversations. Then we relate them as questions, but I don’t represent them. I re-present them to the people across the Internet.
It used to be that Ministry of Economy would say, “But this is not my ministry alone. We have to talk to Minister of Interior or Minister of Indigenous Affairs.” Because they’re literally in the same room, in the Social Innovation Lab, sitting next to each other, they cannot help but brainstorm some real solutions.
We’ve been doing bi-weekly tours, half of them organized by ministry, half of them by our youth counselors in the national administration. It’s been producing pretty good regulatory changes because they are not just abstracted A4 papers. They’re real people talking across screens to the public service.
The public service, this way, gets credit because everything is published to the Internet in a transparent fashion. That covers the social innovation part of PDIS.
We have a central platform for everybody to register. It’s called si.taiwan. Here, you can very easily see which Sustainable Goals are which locality concerning about, which organizations are currently organizing to tackle these Sustainability Goals, which proposals are being made that needs regulatory collaboration.
All the questions are recorded in real time, and it can be tracked on this single website. That’s one of the three branches of my work. That’s social innovation. The other two is open government and youth engagement.
Open…What’s that again?
Open government and youth engagement.
Here they have this innovation scene of Taiwan, I understand.
My office, if you care about personnel, is one person, at most, poached from each ministry. It’s a, by definition, cross-functional and, indeed, cross-line team. Because we’re in the administration itself, there’s 32 vertical ministers, but I’m one of the 9 horizontal ministers. In horizontal minister’s office, there’s no rules, no regulations pertaining to how we organize our offices.
I just said I have three working conditions. One’s voluntary association. I don’t accept order, I don’t give order, but I welcome each minister to send one person to my place so that we can work in a collaborative fashion. At the moment, we have 22 people, meaning not all ministry have sent people. Minister of Defense never did. I wonder why.
(laughter)
Most people-facing ones did. That’s the personnel allocation.
Physically, we do still have three rather large rooms in the administration building itself. We have a room here on the ground floor, a room on the second floor there, and a room on the basement. Altogether, six physical rooms that anyone who joins this horizontal team can fairly use and choose. Also, every year we have 21 interns and so on.
Wow, that’s interesting. How long have you been in charge?
Three years and, as understudy, working in the same administration office for another two years or so – so five years in total.
I’ve also heard something from ShuYan and from other re:public colleagues, and I’m very interested in online community scene in Taiwan, especially g0v.
Yeah, and other platforms where been actively engaging with social innovation here in Taiwan. I’m especially interested at those online communities which have engaged in off-line as well, in physical, in real life. Do you know any interesting entities in Taiwan?
The easiest way is to participate in one of the g0v hackathons. They just had one in the Taipei City Council, of all places. There’s many city councils that are also g0v participants. They offer their workspace and invited everybody in.
I think it’s just a idea that if you see something lacking from the public services, if something.gov.tw isn’t working, people are encouraged to offer better alternatives, something.g0v.tw, literally just a change in the URL. Then release it as open license to the commons.
If the public service likes it, then it takes it back and maintain it for you. If the public service doesn’t like it, at least it form a social object that you can have a dialog on. That’s the basic idea. It’s just a meme, really. If you look at g0v.it, something is happening in Italy, and we certainly don’t have trademark on that.
(pause)
I’m processing the information. [laughs]
It’s OK. Take your time.
If I understood well, you provide tools and opportunities for those…
Just regular meetings. Every week, there’s a smaller project meeting, a meet-up on the vTaiwan project. It’s right here on the second floor, sometimes in the kitchen. Every Wednesday by 7:00 PM, you’ll find a bunch of civic interests here. You can just chat to them. Some of them speak pretty good Japanese.
OK. [laughs]
We run a collaborative project. I was invited as a guest to a vTaiwan Code for Japan, Pnika or something like that, collaboration in Tokyo and in another nearby city where I met Hal Seki-san.
We run some workshops to explore the seal thing in Japan, the seal versus electronic document exchange issue, as well as the telework issue, which seem to be two very hotly debated issue in Japan. We had that debate in 2015.
(laughter)
So we just shared our experience.
Taiwan is pretty big again. I think now everything is happening here in Taipei, but other parts of Taiwan as well.
I don’t know why. Recently I talked to the editor-in-chief of a publication in Japan, and he didn’t explain way, but he mention Tainan is quite interesting place.
It is. It’s our cultural capital.
He told me that there are many interesting things happening.
Very much so.
[laughs] He didn’t explain to me what things.
Maybe we can make some introductions, but that depends on whether you’re interested in space-building, community-building, that sort of thing, or whether you’re interested on applied digital technology. These two are not always the same thing.
Sure. I personally interested in digital innovation.
The tech part of civic tech?
Tech part, yeah, I am. I also, when I consider for the magazine, probably I like to know about the physical space innovation as well, which I guess is happening in Tainan.
It’s all happening in Tainan. There’s lots of happening there. I don’t know. I can introduce you to the Tainan Sprout – I think that’s the translation – Association, which is doing a lot of such things in Tainan, both from a civic tech side as well as from a community-building side.
Urda Yen is one of our judges in our Presidential Hackathon, so she’s well-versed in the more community building part of civic tech. The Presidential Hackathon, very simply put, is a three-month-long hackathon. By the end of it, the president gives out five trophies to five teams.
Each of them are tri-sectoral already by then and carry a presidential promise that, whatever you do, you will become public policy in a year. We will do whatever to make it happen. The trophy is a project. If you turn it on, it shows the image of the president making that promise.
[laughs]
It’s very useful for internal negotiations. If your director general doesn’t like the idea, just summon the president and he or she will say nothing. In any case, Tainan Sprout is good to talk about if you are interested. We can certainly make that introduction.
Very cool.
(pause)
I understand your general work as digital minister, but recently, for instance last year, especially do you focus on some specific areas?
You do like…
Whatever.
OK. [laughs] I get it. It’s cool.
All my colleagues choose their own work as well. We’re thoroughly leaderless.
How many people are you?
22 or so.
(pause)
A topic that we’ve been talking a lot recently is what we call micro-institutions. We think to promote a community-based, like community treatment in economy, and circular economy even, we need a small micro-institution in each area.
Here we call them the social sector, but I think it’s the same idea.
Yeah, probably. I’m specifically interested in what kind of thing’s happening with the social sectors or micro-institutions in Taiwan, in general.
Taiwan has a culture of community-building movement since the ‘80s. When the martial law is being lifted, they proposed to don’t have presidential election. There’s a decade or so for people to build their communities in a very much peer-to-peer way because there’s no legitimacy of the president.
People didn’t get to vote for the president, but people do get to organize locally. The co-op movement, the movement for community colleges, the movement for educational reform, and so on all took the form of micro-institutions is what I’m referring to. The federation of micro-institutions very quickly emerged because there was no “central government” that works with them.
At the time, the Counsel for Culture very much encouraged the building of the social sector. Again, seeing that this is before direct presidential election, the end result can be seen in disaster recovery, for example. Tzu Chi is really strong in the social sector here, and they do carry more legitimacy than the central administration on their specialties.
They’re very well-funded, but they mostly rely on volunteers in the local chapters, which are all micro-institutions. This gave them agility that can respond to the September 21 earthquake or any other large disaster in a fashion that is simply unimaginable just after lifting of martial law public service.
The micro-institution are not necessarily the public institutions, but also can emerge from online communities or…
That’s right. After the introduction of the World Wide Web and the direct presidential election in 1996, they kind of changed. The person to interview here is probably someone that ran Yam, Y-A-M, if they are still around. They call it the “yam vine”, like the rhizome, a idea that those micro-institutions need the online spaces to horizontally connect while maintaining their own identities.
They call themselves 蕃薯藤. They’re probably one of our first digital social enterprises, started as a association but then re-incorporated as a company. That was ‘96, ‘97, around the time I also run another start-up. In any case, Yam took a social purpose – just think Yahoo, but everything is for a social purpose – then they run search engines and everything.
The online morphing of these on-the-ground social communities is best captured if you get to interview some of the earlier Yam co-founders. For example, we have Ambassador-at-Large Chen Jen-ran, JR, who was the founder of Yam. We have Hsiao Ching-Teng working now on the Board of Science and Technology as a section chief, who was providing the technologies enabling the Yam network.
Ethan Tu, which runs the AI Labs here, a not-for-profit AI research team, think OpenAI, open company, was also one of the people behind not only the largest online community back then, the PTT – our equivalent of Reddit – but also contributing to Yam’s technical infrastructure.
I think they would be much more equipped than I am because I was busily advocating for open source – at that time, it’s not even called open source – free software movement back then. I’m happy to make introductions.
If you could spell it.
Y-A-M.
When was founded, sorry?
As an association, I think ‘93, something like that. There’s a Wikipedia article. They re-incorporated as a company maybe ‘97.
I will check it out later.
After they all get lifted to the Internet space, it took two large changes. One is the introduction of blogging, and, after that, micro-blogging, this kind of public writing, like in Japan the Hatena or Livedoor.
Blogging became a way for individuals who identifies with an idea to form micro-institutions purely online without the traditional on-the-land organization. Because many traditional social organization also blog, it created a solidarity.
Ilya Eric Lee, he’s no longer around in this world now, but if you read his blog, the Ilyagram, there’s a lot of early context. He also introduced Nettimes and many other international communities to Taiwan.
The second-largest change is mobile computing, of course. With mobile computing, people can suddenly both take direct action, but at the same time, maintain the institutional link between the algorithm-defined collaborations.
For example, during the Sunflower Occupy, you can literally see across the walls of the Occupy legislation by virtue of having a phone or a projector that shows what happens across the street. Recently, Hong Kong, you can hear a tactic or a new interaction pattern emerging two blocks from you.
You can immediately replicate it here just by turning down the light and turning up the volume. Then it feels like you’re with them. That mobile computing really changed the landscape.
It used to be that there’s people typing and there’s people taking direct action. Now, these two are fused again back into one. It’s like this shape of community-building. I’m talking of very broad brushes, but…
I’d like to explain a little bit about what I’ve done maybe to give more context. Basically, I’m originally from Japan, but my background in human geography.
Which is like cultural anthropology, but the other way around.
Sorry?
[laughs] Sorry. No, go ahead.
(laughter)
Cultural anthropology you said?
The idea is that there’s a human geographer doing a internship here with our space. There was also another that focused on the anthropology, but focusing on spaces, so how space defines culture in anthropology. It’s very interesting because if you look at their research methods, it’s the same.
It is.
It’s just hanging out, right?
(laughter)
Definitely.
One puts the space at the center, and one put the human.
Exactly. Anyway, both things are defined by both. The human is decided by the geography of the place where they live. Geography is kind of also defined by people to use the geography as well.
That’s right. It took me ages to figure out they’re kind of two sides of the same thing, trying to sell back to their different disciplines.
(laughter)
Exactly. My background is human geography. Then I moved to more of urban design, but I was also doing a researcher for a long time in the University of Barcelona, specifically housing issues like gentrification. Barcelona has massive issues with because it’s such a touristy city.
A lot of social movement happened as well, so I was basically following all these movement. I was thinking how to put this energy of those people who’s been protesting for ages to make change. That’s when I decided to go to design field.
I was in a traditional university where I was doing just research. Research is still one of my favorite activities, but I felt like, “I’m young. Maybe I should change something.” I thought, “OK, maybe I need to learn different discipline to make something happen,” which was design for me.
That’s why I join IAAC Institute. I learned emergent technologies like digital publication, AI, coding. Still, I’m practicing it, and I’m nowhere close to…
That’s fine.
…the programmers, but I try to understand. I’ve been following and researching about Fab City Movement and Fab Lab. Fab Lab is not only about gentrification, but it’s about distributing technology to the people.
Democratizing.
Exactly. We talk a lot about how to democratize the technology and how to use those things. For instance, one of the activities – I was also part of it – is called the Making Sense Project. Have you heard about it?
I’ve heard of it.
We are providing open-source sensors to the neighbors who have been suffering from the noise in this plaza square for such a long time. The city government was like, “Ah, it’s just your perception. It’s just a noise that you hear, but it’s nothing.”
They’re citizen scientists!
Exactly.
(laughter)
I was not there yet, but the team was providing sensors. The funny thing is a couple of people, they also design all these sensors with the idea of, “We like to help the citizens,” blah, blah, but they didn’t know how. At the end, they’re technologists. They really never did such profound research of how to let the citizen use their technologies.
Then another person came. She’s the CEO of Ideas For Change, Mara Balestrini. She’s well-known in Barcelona, and she’s been doing some project like DECODE.
I was actually with that DECODE pilot project.
Excellent.
It was really interesting. That’s where I found, “OK, maybe my research skill can be super useful in this field.” Maybe I could engage more on how to use technology in a more creative way, with a more social way, not only the technological advancement or issues but the engagement with the people, between people and technology.
That’s why I’ve been doing material design as well, which is really different from digital technology. I went to a beer factor in Barcelona and I was making new material out of the waste, which was the starting point of my circular design thing.
I’m still interested…I’m introducing emerging technology in that sort of sector as well. That’s why I’m here in Taiwan this time. I’m in a Japan-Taiwan circular economy symposium. I’m also interested at how to emerge those micro-institutions which help those movement to scale up.
Or scale out.
Yeah, scale out, sorry.
Or scale deeply.
Exactly, to be more solid, let’s say.
That’s right.
Be more engaged with the community. I personally think that communities are not necessarily your neighbors who you live next door for ages. I think it’s opposite.
When you live with someone very close for a long time, you have such a relationship that, if I say something, they’re going to react like this. “OK, let’s keep…”
There’s a social script.
Exactly, so that blocks to make innovation happen.
Unless you have common enemies.
(laughter)
It’s a funny thing because the Making Sense project gave me such insights. They brought people from outside our neighborhood because when they did such things, there’s always, “Oh, yeah,” because this person voice for this political body, and then that person, blah, blah, blah. Everything’s up before we discussed what to solve.
That’s why I started to look at these digital online communities. Wikipedia is a good example. People provided their knowledge for free to make one of the most-used dictionary in the world. I’m trying to mix all this, the physical, online-offline things. At least in Asia, I think Taiwan is one of the most advanced country.
Very much so.
That’s why I’m here. We interested, in short, online, off-line activities in Taiwan. It doesn’t necessarily have to be open source, open information of the government. It can be food or…
It’s mostly food. As you can see, our number one consensus is food that is live-streamed, and it’s so symbolic. If you hear of social innovation and maybe you don’t understand it, but you’re in a place where lots of good food, at least next week you will return. That’s the whole point. Even if you forget everything you have learned, at least there’s good food next week.
[laughs] That’s true. Do you anything with energy and other sectors as well?
Sure. What we learned from Japan is that having solar panels and citizen-owned power supplies not necessarily covering 100 percent of their users, because every place is different, creates a co-ownership and mutual care.
A few days ago, we visited a place where they do clam farming. I went to the water and took some clams. I’m a vegetarian, but I eat oysters and clams because they don’t suffer. In any case, the idea there is that, because they’re close enough to the sea, they don’t have to draw underground water.
They can control the salinity by opening and closing the door toward the common gateway to the strait, to the ocean, on strategic times in the rising and falling of the tide. It’s very energy-saving. It’s low-density farming. It can be very easily collaborating with other ecosystem players – and birds, fishes, and so on – in a self-sustainable way.
If you introduce solar panels, it improves rather than takes away the sustainability of this ecosystem because it was designed with sustainability in mind. This kind of collaborative design in Taiwan is part of the Regional Revitalization Plan. If the local businesses…I don’t have to explain that because we took the idea from Japan.
(laughter)
The Regional Revitalization Plan means that if the local people figure something out with help from the local universities and colleges, teleworking public servants, and so on, the central government gives a guaranteed introduction of investment budget, coaching, things like that, in a way that is very long-term thinking.
As long as they correspond to Sustainable Goals and they can attract young people to return or to stay there to start their own ecosystem and preferably give more births as compared to municipalities, which we took from Japan.
[laughs]
We have a system called TESAS that, just like RESAS…
(laughter)
…provides a system for fact-based conversation among all the stakeholders and communities. The great thing that you’re from Japan means that I don’t have to explain all this to you. [laughs]
I don’t know. The funny thing is that it doesn’t seem really popular in Japan. Currently, I’m working on a local community business development banks. I was investigating about it. To be honest, I haven’t heard about the water from anyone.
I visited a few model townships, and I’ve read a book that takes a lot of anecdotes about people successfully teleworking. I think they were built that way exactly because they met a lot of resistance in every other place.
There are parts of Japan that they got something working. We’re learning from that. We, frankly speaking, learn even more from places that didn’t get anything right.
(laughter)
For sure.
Like if they over-rely on subsidies, we know that never works. Thank you for providing a pilot, I guess.
(laughter)
At the end, that’s the thing. Here today in the conference, a funny thing is some of the Taiwanese, I think he’s director of Taiwan industry sector or something, he said, “We’re really good a speaking, but haven’t done anything.” He said Japan is really good at doing things, but I felt the opposite. Actually, it’s the other way around.
It depends on how high you are in the institution.
[laughs]
That’s the defining characteristics of macro-institutions, which is why I insist on being horizontal.
(laughter)
In any case, what I’m getting at is that renewable energy in the form of solar panels as well as wind power are the two main directions Taiwan is going. Wind power is more widely accepted and actually will take on a large fraction of our total energy input, a fact to really good wind fields on the Taiwan Strait in offshore wind appliance.
Those are less likely to be citizen-governed. The actual co-op that revolves around low-output wind and solar panel is maybe just enough to cover. We’re not at a point where they have a lot of extra to sell back to Taipower. We’re not quite where, say, Germany is, but we’re moving into that general direction, as is Germany.
All these activities, I can find the information on the website?
Where?
The Social Innovation website covers a lot of those cases already, si.taiwan.gov.tw. For the Civil IoT infrastructure, if you’re interested in the data side, it’s all very easy to remember. It’s all ending in .taiwan.gov.tw, so si.taiwan covers the social innovation.
If you change the SI to a CI, which is collective intelligence, then you get into the data service part of it. If you change the C to AI, you get into the AI part of it. Oops, I should have took out the…here. So on and so forth. If you change the AI to smart, you get a road map-ish kind of thing to a smart, sustainable, human-centric – I don’t even know what it means – DIGI+.
(laughter)
Meaning development, innovation, governance, and inclusion, corresponding to the shared infrastructure, the private sector, the public sector, and the social sector. I wrote this part. I didn’t write this part.
(laughter)
In each of those bubbles, if you click it, it should take you to the corresponding website that then expands the vision circles. I can send you a list of URLs afterwards.
That’d be great.
They’re all of the same format. That’s the general idea. As you can see, we don’t see digital as something that is siloed. We see them as common, fertile ground on which the different creativities can happen. Meaning that when we talk about a smart nation, we actually mean people. We don’t mean smart city, dumb citizens. [laughs]
(pause)
Do you know any emerging social sectors, specifically you like, for the last two or three years?
There’s a new development that literally just happened this week. We reclassify universities, including private universities, as a social innovation organization. It’s important because, if you say social enterprise here, it means different thing to different people.
To people who have a more British or Italian background, it means something like a co-op, a CIC, or something like that. If you talk to someone who has a more American background, they will start thinking about Kickstarter, a B Corps, or something like that. If they have trainings in New Zealand or Australia, it doesn’t even mean anything. It means maybe entrepreneurship…
(laughter)
…for the public good. It’s tech for good.
(laughter)
That’s because New Zealand, like Taiwan, is caught in between the different views of social entrepreneurship. Social enterprise get to mean three not-overlapping things at once. It could be a charity or a foundation that has some service or product to sell to sustain itself as a community CIC.
It could be a large company suddenly deciding, dedicating their mission to a social purpose as B Corps. It could also be a co-op that’s already doing perfectly fine and creating increasing value to the society between them. They’re not even seeing themselves as a charity or a corporation as in many places in India and many place where they have a cooperative tradition.
My point being these are actually different intellectual strands. Somehow, in a rush to balance the excess of capitalism, [laughs] they’re now, right after the financial crisis, banded together as a viable alternative to excessive capitalism. You see lots of Horizon 2020 projects. [laughs]
The term digital social innovation was defined then. We didn’t know that this is a word, but it apparently becomes a word that’s broad enough so everybody can join. That’s the most important part. Now, instead of saying social entrepreneurs, which can mean anything, my office say, “You can register as a organizer for social innovation.”
To operate as a entrepreneur, it defines a kind of a growing institution. You want to grow the person inside your wall, so to speak, your institutional perimeter. To define you as a social innovation organizer means that you’re spreading something. It’s a paradigm shift.
Most importantly, these more siloed definitions could not include the universities. University are not open for business, certainly, and they are not quite charities either. Where are they?
If you’re a social entrepreneur, nobody runs a university from scratch. University have a lot of institutions behind them, so they cannot be a start-up either. It doesn’t fit into any of those traditions that I was just describing.
Now if you are a university that restructure empirically around the sustainable goals, if you teach all the business school people how to make circular design, if you teach all your humanities people how to use digital technology to rebuild social trust, suddenly, you are a organizer for social innovation.
You’re not keeping them. After four years, they’re gone, so you’re not growing your human resources, [laughs] but you’re still a social innovation organization. That regulation was just passed maybe last month, and we just had a university registering today.
This is important because then we explicitly say it’s not about how large your employee base is, how many page your GRI Sustainability Report is, or how many ballot scorecards you can fill on the B Corps scorecard. All these are fine, but, frankly speaking, we are here just to introduce it to each other so that you can realign your goals along the axis of the 169 Sustainable Goals and maybe more if you want.
That’s the governance change from a traditional top-down way where each ministry take care of the organizations of their type, to a decidedly horizontal way where we just make introductions and make sure that we find common values despite different positions.
I always operated like that, but we didn’t code that up in regulation, but now we do. That’s a very recent development.
You’re specifically talking about private universities, right?
No, public university can also apply. It’s just the bureaucracy takes more time. A private university register as soon as we introduced the registration. Public institutions already run…They call it University Social Responsibility, USR programs.
The thing with that is it makes the association something that part of the professors do on their spare time, as the CSR usually brings that association. Now most publicly listed company say “sustainable strategy” now. They don’t say CSR anymore.
We’re making a similar shift. Starting next year, when university engage in regional revitalization, they have to index both by the SDGs they create, but also on how many organization that previously didn’t know each other that they introduce by virtue of being a university and therefore have some public trust.
Their activity as a organization and agenda-setter is now much more important than their KPIs of people trained, which is meaningless, actually.
Why do you think Taiwan is being such innovative? It’s a big question, but what do you think it is?
One of the thing about Taiwan is that democracy is so new, so the institution doesn’t have history. There’s no inertia.
We literally got democracy during the same years as World Wide Web. The people who designed democracy is meeting, demanding the constitution that doesn’t quite fit, or changing the election rules, or introducing referenda.
They all started at the same time. There’s no 200 years of republican tradition that you are introducing a little bit of change to, which is very difficult. It literally all started the same year.
From the very beginning, they have a participatory direct action nature in it. It also helps, the person who developed theories that inform our current constitution, the Dr. Sun Yat-sen, believed not just in republics but more so in direct democracy. Kind of ahead of his time, actually.
(laughter)
He wrote direct democracy into the constitutional ideas.
OK, sorry. Democracy was introduced in Taiwan in ‘96?
‘96 if you talk about presidential election. There’s local elections before that.
Because actually it reminds me of Catalonia, where I was living in the last five years.
Exactly.
Spain is very…well, not like Taiwan, but also new to democracy as well. It has only 40 years of democracy.
Yeah, including the 15-M movement.
Exactly, yeah. Now, oh, this movement came – was born from this – the 15-M movement of governing Barcelona. Well, Madrid not anymore, but Barcelona.
Also, all these people working on digital projects and all these open-source platform like participatory budget platforms – they’re mainly from that kind of movement as well, like 15-M.
That’s right. That’s right. I think the Council foundation, like I’m going to work with, is now moved to the Netherlands, which is also very much in tune of this kind of horizontal governance, and also this place was also visited by a pirate – the mayor of Prague, also from the Pirate Party.
Yeah. Zdeněk Hřib. We all share very similar worldviews. It makes collaboration far easier than go-to statecraft, multilateral and unilateral meetings, because we see them as not quite outdated, but not good to figure out norms.
Maybe we design norms first, and the large institutions can implement them, but please leave the norm design to these nimble horizontal networks.
Yeah, Madrid is a little different, because at the end after all, it’s the capital of a big country. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, which is a little different identities. I know quite enough about this.
It’s a jurisdiction.
Exactly, yeah.
[laughs]
To be very honest, I love Madrid, but in Barcelona, a lot more interesting is happening. I think it’s also kind of the attitude to be different from the capital of the countries, and we try to be more innovative, so they welcome more newcomers in us, inside.
Yeah, including hologram presentations.
Yeah, exactly.
(laughter)
Experiences like with Andres. He’s a Colombian, but he’s been based in Barcelona for the last, I don’t know, 10 years, probably. They’re really good at picking up nice, talented people.
They just randomly threw me, from their minister, the Catalonia Charter of Digital Rights. I reviewed them and they seem OK, so I just signed. You don’t see that happening in many other ministries.
[laughs]
[laughs]
For sure, being a minority in a big, say, a nation, also gives a lot of difference, I think, because that’s what I’ve seen in Catalonia.
Yeah, Japan it’s not a thing. Actually, it’s the opposite. It’s been colonizing many other countries. It doesn’t have that history of being a minority, so that’s why I’m trying to get insights – how to boost innovation scenes in Japan, and what is a trick, or what is the drive?
Last time, g0v contributors worked with Code for Japan and the Korean equivalent to run a hackathon across three jurisdictions in Okinawa, which is the same distance…
(laughter)
…for each of us. [laughs] I think some local councilors or mayors – they’re actually quite flexible and nimble. I think Okinawa to Japan is somewhat like Catalonia. I’m not advocating or anything. I am just saying.
(laughter)
Yeah, I know what you mean. You’re right. That’s what I thought, because Okinawa, that’s where we would present in Japan. Anyways, yeah. As I said, that’s actually why I’m not based in Tokyo now.
I’m based in Fukuoka, because the reason that Tokyo, I saw, is very difficult to move things, especially innovative things. On the other hand, in the southern part of Japan, Fukuoka is a lot more interested. People have their own identities.
For instance, SoftBank is from Fukuoka as well. There are quite a lot of interesting startups and digital technology companies, and Kyushu area, the southern part of Japan, there are many areas that have been suffering a reduction of population and stuff. They feel necessity of doing something new, because otherwise, they’re going to fall.
When I visited New Zealand the third time – I visited first Wellington and then Auckland – the third time, to Christchurch. That was the most memorable. They are in the south islands, but they’re large enough.
They had an earthquake, so they had to plan everything again, anyway. They have pretty good social sector participation rules for such public buildings. People, they are willing to wait a very long time, by Taiwan standards, for it to be properly rebuilt in a sustainable way.
That gave them a far larger canvas that they can paint in, for example, Wellington, which is all bureaucrats. I probably have to edit that in my transcript, but yes.
(laughter)
It is mostly around national government matters. [laughs]
Yeah, for sure. It’s interesting. We are looking at Taiwan as an example, actually, of this micro-institution movement, or more like community-driven economy, community-based economies. The purpose is coming back here and for the interviews to get additions. I don’t know.
We’re here just an exhibit space of what people actually do in Hualien, in Taitung, in Tainan, in all those places. The six municipalities, if you are looking to source of innovations, you can spend some time there to learn about the governance mentality, the tech sector.
Truth to be told, most tech sector is located in the six municipalities. To learn about the organizations, it may help to talk to the municipal people who actually live most of their time outside the municipality. They maintain that connection to their municipal friends, but they actually do their work elsewhere.
That’s where we find most social innovations. Our work is just where they run into trouble. For example, if they want telemedicine, and our regulation haven’t yet caught on, my work is just to sit here or visit them to listen to them outlining the problems.
Just move the regulation out of their way, so that telemedicine, even telepsychiatry, and things like that, now becomes legal in Taiwan. If you are always in municipalities, clinics is more dense than 11. Within walking distance, there is going to be a clinic. “What are you talking about about, telemedicine?”
(laughter)
Yeah. Would you recommend us to visit, or?
How long do you have here?
This time, I’m staying here until Thursday night, so we don’t have time. For the next time, I mean.
Sure, it’s fine. Let’s see. I think, first of all, you should talk to ST here, [laughs] who has interviewed social innovation organizations all across Taiwan, just for the film that we’re about to release, either this week or next. She can give you the link of such social innovation organizations.
They’re interesting, because many of them, they started life in a municipality or they’re trained in a kind of business-worthy training. Then like you, they decided, “Maybe social design actually makes more sense.”
(laughter)
They start working on circularity and other newer things. We’re featuring them prominently, mostly because they signal a different reaction for the Taiwanese teenagers. Now when they are looking for jobs, they look for more meaning than wage, that they would not trade for a lack of meaning.
In their parents’ generation, it’s not like that. It’s giving a good account for the meaning of participating in any institution, day job or not, is now a collective demand of the business sector. They are somewhat ready for it if they’re publicly listed by a lot. But if they’re an SME business, they are not really ready for it.
That creates tension. That’s why we’re saying, “You don’t have to think that if you are working for a social purpose it cuts into your profits. If you are designed for circularity, actually, you tap into a much larger market in the investment community than you can possibly imagine. You are solving world-wide problems and world-wide profits because of that.
ST would has a more up-dated list of the key SIOs.
OK, this organization, this company, or this community is must go?
No, none of them are must go. That’s the resource. If you know someone you’re going to be introduced into a lot of meeting other people. There really is no best beginning.
Maybe there’s some natural gatherings. I’m going to an indigenous kind of young people to revitalize their indigenous nations. That’s this weekend, because during the weekends, the local young people organize their own artistic holder forums.
Sometimes, writers when they in, participate and lend them some facilitation skills, or sing them a prayer, or something. That kind of ministry.
(laughter)
Definitely a cool ministry.
Yeah. That’s in Taichung. You are already left by then, right? The travelers are going to be invited by them on Thursday.
Yeah, I know. I saw like that, they’ll stick around for this conference and things, this time.
Wednesday here, there’s going to be a bunch of SIOs focusing on education innovation. They’re also around Taiwan, they want education like in Japan, I think you have food and agricultural education, this kind of education category. We don’t yet. Starting this year, there’s room in the curriculum for that to develop.
We are trying to figure out how to establish it, right?
[laughs]
People who want to introduce philosophy in their curriculum can also do so now. People in the French style, and people who want to introduce use eSports as their curriculum can also do so now, and train them to be responsible youth advisers or something.
All this is very new, like new as of this September. We just had a new K-12 curriculum, so people are figuring out together how this inter-disciplinary, inter-dependence curriculum does even mean. That’s something, maybe you can meet some stakeholders if you come here…
On Wednesday…
…on the morning of Wednesday. Even the judicial branch is going to be here, because we’re introducing a jury system for the first time. A lot of legalese must be made understandable by the common people. That, broadly speaking, is also education.
They developed an AI that translates a very difficult to pass judgment or a regulatory resolution into easy to explain factors, and also expand the hard to understand words into common, understandable words, and things like that.
There’s a lot of AI that can help to make the culture translation quick. It’s also space-making, fills the online space, and also in the courtroom literally. We invited also the judicial branch to share their education innovations. They’re one of the winner of presidential efforts this year as well, which means their software will be deployed by the next year, and so on, and so forth.
There’s, I guess, lots of fun for the Wednesday. If you want to visit Thailand, Esti also has a list.
Yeah, so from tomorrow we are going to be together with Renat a lot. Do you know Renato?
Eileen?
Who is that?
I think she was mentioned in an email with you, I guess.
Oh, Eileen. OK, that’s great.
Yeah, basically she’s organizing this workshop for tomorrow with us. We’ll be together, and yeah. They seem very interested in things. We look forward to such entities, more in Taiwan.
It all depends on how long are you planning to be out next time. We can plan for the next visit, yeah.
Yeah, that would be cool. For the next time I think we’re going to come here to interview actually, it’s not been decided yet. But the plan is to visit here with Bryan Boyer.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, to find the institutions in Taiwan. We also at not only Taipei, but Taiwan, all the other cities in Taiwan. We think that would be main content of the second edition of Mormon Magazine.
OK, that works. When are you…like this year?
Yeah, this year, it must be.
Hopefully sometime this year. Just let me know. I’ll be mostly visiting, I don’t know, four continents, seven cities, until the end of the year, so I might not be around. ST will likely be around. Actually, not when we go to Ethiopia, but we will still have somebody around. [laughs]
I very much look forward to visit Ethiopia. I’ve heard that Addis Ababa has really, really consolidated its infrastructure. It may actually have broadband Internet. A lot of our work only works in a broadband as human right environment. We’re being very honest about that.
Have you been to Barcelona?
Not physically.
(laughter)
Virtually, yeah.
Yeah, virtually. I’ve been many time to Madrid from the days of democratic cities. That was before DCOT, right?
Yeah, before.
There’s a lot of Horizon 2020 continuation project. I lost track, but I am interested in all of them. I try to attend as much I can. I think Pablo Soto and also, Iago, we’re all very good friends. I spent quite some time, even after being the digital minister, to coach people in Medialab-Prado as their mentor-in-residence.
First, traveling as a robot for a few weeks, and then I fly in, using carbon avatar, and they see me still as a continuation of personality. That was a really nice experiment, because in 360 camera, when I drive the robot around, I can wear VR goggles and turn locally.
The ambiance is right there. The situational awareness, the ambiance, I just can’t taste the food. That’s the only shortcoming. When people party, I’m embodied and can party with people. I had a conversation and got a photo with Pablo, which is also an assistive device.
There is actually something like a kinship. I think, Xuyang went in my stead the following year. Then the rest, you know.
Yeah, OK. I just was going to mention about Pablo, because I met him probably last year as well. I’m not very sure if he is still in the department, though, because Madrid has really radical change of political things.
I know. I think they are still keep council running, if not contributing.
OK. I didn’t know that. Madrid Medialab does very interesting things. Also, I think Barcelona, you might find it very interesting as well. You know that Decode Project was basically led by Francesca Bria.
She was in charge of both launch in two cities. Also, quite many interesting players around this municipal government, especially the current government of Barcelona, the Ada Colau. She’s been quite interesting.
She’s been doing quite interesting things. Barcelona decided to provide Fab Labs as a public infrastructures. Each district has its themes. Where I was living has been has a theme of fabric. This public Fab Lab is focusing on fabric sectors.
It’s not only about Fab Lab, but for sure, Fab Lab has quite a lot of powers in Barcelona, I guess.
That’s awesome. I also visit the Vitoria Estates?
Estates, yeah.
They don’t seem that much…It’s a really nice place to live, but I don’t see as many Fab Labs. I really like the pace. It’s very smooth, and people are really friendly, and so on. I was there for a TED talk. They’re really happy that I went there in the flesh. I could have done a hologram.
(laughter)
I really like that area is what I’m saying.
It’s really beautiful. Actually, one of the main contents of this magazine, it talks about superblocks projects. The guy behind the project is called Salvador Rueda. He’s actually just retired. He’s around 70, I guess.
He basically brings the idea of biology in urban design. He is a biologist, actually. Funny thing is only half of the people working in this Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona are architects or urbanists. There’s psychologists, biologists, and they basically see the city as an ecosystem, but in a physical infrastructure.
Superblocks is the project which promotes to have more diversity of legal entities, what they call, which means the schools and shops. They also define a very specifically, for instance, the region, the Japanese region, and the Spanish region are different for them.
They don’t have the same, I don’t know how to say, number in the calculation. They define this diversity in an urban design way. He has been implementing these superblock projects in Barcelona. Also, quite all over the world.
He’s going to implement it soon in New York, as well, I guess. Vancouver is done. If people see that superblock project is just a pedestrianization project, but actually, the philosophy behind the project is a lot more beyond pedestrianization.
That’s why Vitoria is the first case of superblock. That was the prototype. I think that you saw that Vitoria is a walkable city.
Super walkable. I walked all day.
Yeah, exactly. Transportation is really well-designed, for Salvador, Vitoria was a prototype, or his idea. Actually, to Southern Seven, I guess, Vitoria won the Green Prize of Europe…
I’m aware of that.
That was a prototyping of his massive idea that he’s doing in Barcelona right now. It’s maybe controversial, because when you stop the cars that the city, many people go against. It’s because he implemented it in a pretty massive way this time.
He thought he’s well-prepared to do, because he’s done Vitoria. He’s done others. Still, little by little, all these are really accepted in Barcelona. It’s a lot of playgrounds in Barcelona. I’m from an urban design, a physical design, so I’m also interested in this kind of space design as well.
Also, I look at this Fab Lab movement, especially I’m close to Tomas Diez, because I was part of his first master degree, which is called “Design for Emerging Teachers.” Sound really romantic name. [laughs]
No, it’s good. It’s almost art, without the shocking parts.
(laughter)
I’m trying to do a self-sufficient cities in Japan. I don’t know, I’m just in Japan for just for one month.
Re:public is a good team to be with. They have the right connections.
It’s wonderful. Also, I don’t know, if you have time, you can have a look at the magazine.
I will certainly do.
This Mara that I introduced, the sensor in a square, she is in the fourth chapter or something. Being Fab Lab is very interesting as well. They consider technology as an interface with the environment.
I think this is a very fruitful line of collaboration, using the term “circle economy,” where kind of successful to get the business sector to start taking this very seriously. Also, the 16-year young lady who petitioned for the plastic straw banning didn’t have to go to strike on Fridays.
They actually sat down and reach a multi-stakeholder consensus. I think Taiwan has the right culture to seek common understanding above fine consensus. If we try to strive for fine consensus, people with the most time win, whether they are offline or online.
In some countries, some jurisdictions, some cultures, there is this kind of fighting, debating culture, which is good. It may also make deliberation something that’s utopian, because it would, in a Habermas fashion, assume a rational agent.
If your culture is already about showing somebody that you are the boss, [laughs] then so much for rational discussion. In Japan – and also, Japan influenced Taiwan – I don’t know how to translate, but 和 is important.
An equilibrium, let’s translate it as that. I think the equilibrium thinking seeks a constantly-revisable rough consensus. That enables a culture where we can agree to disagree much easier. That, I think, is also a key of why the social sector grows so rapidly.
The social sector sees that it doesn’t have to work with a very westernized culture, where the rational must always be spelled out. Rather, if you have fights over food, and their fights over food, you actually get to know each other really well really quickly. That’s community-building idea.
It’s been very interesting. I think we just quickly have this discussion within my team. We have to define for how long we’re going to be here for the next time.
SIOs, we have over 400 of them now. There’s no way you can visit all them in a single trip. That’s literally impossible. You can do some quantitative analysis, I guess. It’s a database, after all.
Yeah. This is my very personal question.
In Taipei, I’ve seen a lot of green in the entrance of each apartment. To be honest, I never seen the capital, the country, which is covered massively by green, like here. Why is that? Is there a people’s hobby in general?
That’s one, because edible landscape is a fashion.
It’s a fashionable thing?
Yeah, it’s fashionable to have an edible landscape, and also rooftop gardens and green walls. It is just trendy. It’s no longer trendy. It was trendy 10 years ago, but people still keep it running, I guess.
The massive change, I think, happened around the Taipei International Flower Expo. Before, it was communities that take care of those gardening stuff. Around the International Flower Expo. The city government said, “Why don’t we just connect all the rings, and make them look good.”
Then they decided to do the bike lanes. There was also a top-down plan and it worked pretty well, yeah.
Yeah, of course the public infrastructure is also covered by green as well. It has to be, but for me, it’s going to be on a personal hobby type like gardening, because sometimes I see a…
It’s not the garden in your house, it’s your house in the garden.
Yeah, exactly. [laughs] Sometimes I see the trees, like massive, bigger than the apartment itself.
That’s right.
I was simply shocked. I love it, but…
There’s also something about the construction laws that you have to give a certain percent of trees.
Oh, yeah? OK.
That also helps. Many other factors. We give out awards for green buildings, as does everybody else. The larger companies see it as something that improves your brand, I guess.
Like Taipei 101, they strive not to be the highest in Taiwan but the greenest. [laughs] It’s seen as something that has social status.
I think it as a kind of fashionable thing.
It is quite fashionable.
All right, so back in the day it was not like this?
No, not at all. Not at all. It was more when Taipei was quite ugly, in the 80s.
(laughter)
The metro wasn’t even running then. They say it’s the “darkest period of the traffic.”
[laughs]
Really pretty dark.
[laughs]
But then the first metro gets working, and now we have this. Also, in my childhood, people didn’t recycle at all. Now we recycle…I don’t know, even glass.
In a very high rate, I think, just the second highest, or something. It’s all a generational change of norms, which is why I always believe in norm first design.
Before the norms get there, if we enclose it by a law, then that doesn’t even work. What’s worse, people get into the habit of breaking laws, which is even worse.
Are you born in Taipei?
I’m born in Taipei City.
You were born and raised in Taipei?
-ish. I spent a year-and-a-half in Germany, yes.
A year-and-a-half in Germany, like when you…?
In Saarland which is near France. I learnt Deutsch, then French, and then English after I went to Taiwan. English is my fifth language.
[laughs]
In any case, the one that I’m thinking in now is the one that counts. My dad was doing his PhD. He was a journalist also, I guess. He worked in journalism and covered the Tiananmen protest until June 1st, which is very fortunate for our family.
Then after that, he decided to write a PhD thesis on it. He went to Europe to interview the Tiananmen exiles. I was raised in our living room, which was a large bunch of people caring a lot about democracy. Also how, if we had better technology it might work better.
Oh, wow. That’s interesting. I don’t want to rob you more time…
No, that’s fine. It’s fine. There’s no must-visit SIOs, but the ministries all have their recommended for me to visit SIOs.
[laughs]
…which I did duly visit in the past two years. They must mean something, right?
Yeah. [laughs]
Esti has all the lists of five cities and by the STGs that are working in it.
OK, amazing. Thank you very much.
Thank you.