How old are you?

38.

Were you born in Taiwan?

I’m born in Taipei City.

…in Taiwan. Where do you live?

On the Internet.

…on the Internet.

You’re currently the Minister of Digital of Taiwan.

Yes, since October 2016.

Are you happy?

Yes, I’m very happy.

I just had a video conference this afternoon with my mother, who is a journalist.

She said that this is the most happy foreign mission that I have done in the past four years that she has seen because this time, I travel by myself in my individual capacity, not with a entourage of consulate people. [laughs]

Do you live alone?

Yes.

I live in this dormitory, [laughs] a large building.

16 floor. This is a large building where all the ministers, whether they’re in the legislative, the judiciary, the collective, the examination, or the administration, all live in the same community building. In a sense I live alone but, in another sense, I live with all the other ministers.

Your parents were in the Tiananmen revolution.

My dad was there until the 1st of June in 1989.

‘89, and he covered the Tiananmen protest until the very last week.

Were you there in the square?

No, I was too young to travel. [laughs] I was eight years old.

What do you remember of that time?

I remember my dad sending me the facsimiles, the fax machines, which is the first application of digital photography at the time. I remember viewing on television these new ideas of digital photography that was transmitted through phone lines for the first time.

I think Kodak just invented that idea of a camera transmitting a photographic image through telephone lines at that year. That’s how we get, for example, the Techman coverage from the Tiananmen Square.

Later on my dad also went to Berlin, when the Wall fell. I remember him sending me a small plastic bag and with it a part of the Berlin Wall that broke. It was a very happening year.

You said a week after that your father went to Berlin?

No, no, it’s the same year. Later that year.

If you can just speak phrase by phrase, and then I can translate that part?

OK.

Speak a little bit slower, please. [laughs]

OK, sorry. [laughs]

It’s OK.

I remember that my father went to Beijing to cover the Tiananmen protest. I remember him coming back on the 1st of June and looking very troubled, and also with him a lot of footage.

I also remember him going to Germany to also study for his PhD thesis. That’s what bring us as his family to Germany to live for a year when he do his PhD on Tiananmen.

You all went to Berlin?

Yes.

No. My dad was in Berlin in ‘91. We went to Germany, not Berlin. We went to Saarland, near the French border on the south of Germany, bordering on France at ‘92. My dad went to by himself first, and then we joined him for a year in ‘92.

Briefly, what is your political ideology, feeling?

My political feeling.

What is your political feeling? Where do you situate yourself politically? What do you think has to be done? Not specifically who you want to vote.

What do you defend? What are your beliefs? What is your political sentiment?

I call myself a poetician, meaning that I mostly write poetry, not manifesto.

Poetic, it’s hard to translate. [laughs]

For example, I wrote this very short lines saying that swirling ocean and beautiful islands in a transcultural republic of citizens, and that in poetic form is roughly my sentiment, what I’m working in the poetic for.

She believes that you defend that the citizen should intervene or participate in the politics.

Citizens are always participating in the politics one way or another. What I am trying to make is that I’m more like a channel between the top down political institution and more peer to peer social sector, making sure that we can, like a building have vertical component and horizontal component, so that they support each other rather than cancel each other.

The institutions tend to be vertical, but the social sector tend to be horizontal and peer to peer. My work is to build mechanisms that make them support each other.

The social sector.

You’re talking about just a more horizontal type of way of doing politics?

I’m talking about building horizontal links between the vertical institution. I’m not talking about replacing those vertical structure with horizontal ones. I’m talking about building horizontal structures on top of the vertical ones.

Between a horizontal structure and a vertical structure?

Yes.

Do you have any spiritual belief or religious belief?

I believe in the power of believing. I have the faith in having faith.

At six years old, you read the classics in different languages. What idea moved you, overpowered you, or most influenced you?

A lot of my feeling is shaped around the writings of early Daoist.

I’ll use one example. It’s very simple language that a six year old understands.

[laughs]

For example, there’s a verse that said 30 spoke meet in the harbor and that form a wheel, where the wheel is not as empty. It’s where it is useful and like hollowed out, the clay make a pot. It’s empty, but where the pot is not is where it’s useful. The use of what is is in the what isn’t.

For example, we cut the existing structures but we make windows and we make rooms out of these spaces. Where the room is not, there is room for us. The emptiness, the space is actually where the possibility is, and the structure is just there to support the empty space.

[laughs] This is what, at six years old, you thought with your small mind?

Yes. It makes a lot of sense. The room is full of emptiness, and because of emptiness, it’s like a blank canvas and we can all paint on it. It’s very intuitive for a six years old.

How was childhood for you? How did your childhood friends see you? What was this experience like?

I remember, because I have a heart defect that I did a surgery at 12.

Before 12, I cannot get upset, nor can I be too happy about anything, because when my heart beats too quickly, I faint.

That’s why a lot of my friends think when I was a young child, I seem more mature than my age because there’s a survival skill that tells me to start deep breathing whenever I feel too joyful or too angry.

How did you feel?

First of all, I feel that I’m more at home, more equal, with people who share the same curiosity about knowledge, about society, or about each other. I never felt motivated by scores, by the extrinsic measures, by reward, or whatever, social status because, for me, while other people may feel very happy about it, I cannot feel very happy about it.

Nothing external can motivate me that much.

When you talk about external values, what specifically are you talking about? Norms.

I’m talking about, for example, having a good grade, like having A++ or something.

How did you feel? You felt?

I felt curious. I was having a lot of questions about how people behaved, the way they behave, about why society is structured the way the society is structured. I feel full of puzzles, full of questions, and full of curiosity. That’s my main feeling as a six year old.

At eight years, you learned how to program by yourself.

While reading a book.

Why did you choose this among all the other things that you had at your best, in your reach?

No, I learned many other things, too, when I was eight years old.

I think around the same time, I learned, for example, how to play a piano and how to make music on a notation.

To me, programming is just like making music. It’s just the notes are logic and the melody is human interaction.

The melody is human interaction.

You were specifically interested in this type of language, programming language?

I wouldn’t say so because, to me, it’s just mathematics. It’s the same as the language that mathematicians use. It’s just that computers can automate the calculation, because I really don’t like doing the calculations by hand. [laughs] Having something that does the calculation for me is very useful.

For you, it was a waste of time to calculate?

Yeah, because I can make all the calculation I want, but the computer can free my time to be more creative. When I’m calculating, I don’t feel creative at all.

At 19 years old, you worked in Silicon Valley?

Yeah, but for just about a year.

How did you see it?

What did it mean to you?

At that time, it’s right after the dot com crash. During the dot com boom, I also helped to run startups in Taiwan that get investment from Intel to build CoolBid, the first eBay-like auction sites in Taiwan.

It was the first eBay like auction website in Taiwan, and it got a lot of investment from Intel and so on.

To me, I already had this three year of roller coaster of being a dot com entrepreneur. In Silicon Valley, that was when the open source movement is just beginning when I was in Silicon Valley. I started to learn about what we will now call social entrepreneurship.

That was when open source was beginning.

That’s how I learned this idea of open source, which is a way of combining the social rights, the social freedom movement, social justice movement, and entrepreneurship together, so using market power but also to further the social value. That’s when I start to learn about social entrepreneurship.

How did you live your adolescence? What was most important to you?

Did you have friends? Were you much more of a person who liked to be alone? What happened during that time?

I had two adolescence, a male one and a female. Which one are you referring to?

Like Orlando.

Which one was the first one?

The first one, when I was 14 or 15 years old, the male adolescence. I was just engulfed in the dot com boom. Running this startup with my friends, and many of them 10 years my senior. Most of them in the LGBTIQA+ community. That was mostly about chasing this ideal of the Internet sets everybody free.

We don’t need intermediary anymore, everybody can buy, auction, and sell anything, anywhere to anyone.

10 years later in my other adolescence…

…at that time, it’s more about moving across the globe. When I was having my transgender journey, I traveled to more than 14 countries, more than 20 cities, and with this very international tribe of people in open source, trying to build a language together, a new programming language together.

I remember just a very transcultural view of my new identity very different from Sao Paulo to Vancouver to, I don’t know, Copenhagen, to Helsinki, and so on. It’s a very transcultural development for me, those two years.

Taiwan and Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo, all across different continent, Tallinn.

When you talk about your community, who are you talking about?

I’m talking about anyone who relinquish, who donate all or part of their copyright so that everybody can build upon their work. Together, it’s called an open innovation community. Within it, there’s open source, open hardware, open data, open government, and so on.

Open hardware, open source software, open access for academic papers, open content, open, I don’t know, and many other, open data, and so on.

The copyright.

No, there’s no copyright.

So some of us, like me, we relinquish all of copyright.

Some of us, like Wikipedia, says that we only share the copyright to other people who also share their copyright. This is called copyleft.

It was two years of travel?

Mm hmm.

What essential thing did you discover?

Beyond open code, what did you discover?

It’s hard to describe in English.

There is an African word called Ubuntu.

Ubuntu means roughly that we only become ourselves by making the entire community complete themselves through our contribution to the community. There’s no self actualization without community collaboration.

This is what you discovered in these years of travel?

Yes. It means Ubuntu is transcultural, meaning that everywhere on Earth, I find the same emphasis on Ubuntu.

All is one.

Hmm?

All is one.

All is one. Yes, we are reincarnations of each other.

Reincarnations of each other.

What is your reincarnation?

You. [laughs] That’s the idea.

Where are you from? Not in this world, where are you from?

You mean like the idea…

The galaxy.

The galaxy?

Yeah. What is your dimension?

Back when I was visiting Addis Ababa, I was saying that we’re coming from the same ancestry as Lucy, who walked out of Africa. I think it’s important to realize that the idea of Ubuntu is not limited to human beings because Lucy, strictly speaking, is not Homo sapiens. She’s maybe Homo erectus or something, a species already quite distance from the modern Homo sapiens.

Just like that, we are the stewards for the next sapient life forms on the galaxy. Maybe we’re like Lucy, [laughs] in a sense, that we’re preparing us and preparing the galaxy really for new life forms and new sentiences in the future.

What do you think we are going to be?

Whatever we want to be.

The idea of this whole Digital Future Society thing is that there’s a plurality of futures.

If we keep it plural, we don’t need to choose between the visions about singularity, which is always about reducing possibility, like a inevitable linear future.

Rather, we can focus our energy on making sure that the plurality that is already here gets conserved and indeed amplified with digital technology. That’s what I mean by bringing digital to the society rather than asking society to conform to the digital.

I don’t understand… The technology comes to us, but don’t we create technology?

If we create technology and then immediately give away the monopoly of so-called intellectual property… then any culture can appropriate this technology in whichever way that feels appropriate to that community.

If they don’t have intellectual property.

If the creators agree to give away, to share the…

If we design our technology for people, that means we decide for people.

If we design with people, that means that people take the technology to the appropriate use.

This is what you’re trying to do in Taiwan?

That’s just what people in Taiwan are trying to do, and mostly writing poetry. [laughs]

I’m just writing poems.

When we see. This the portrait?

This is my job description.

When we see Internet of Things…

You can’t translate that.

And the photo?

Yes. If you go to my Twitter, it’s pinned on my Twitter. [laughs]

You can, of course, take a photo.

This is called the technological prayer?

Yeah. This is my prayer and also…

This is your prayer?

Yeah, and also a job description. This is what digital minister means.

This prayer started…

This started with the Sunflower Revolution?

Yeah. The Sunflower Revolution is one very visible demonstration that puts everybody’s awareness of new possibilities. It’s a demo, a demonstration.

It’s a demo, like showing something possible.

You were there?

Yeah, I was there the night before they broke into the parliament. I was there to support the live streaming.

What did you experience? What did happened? What happened to you in your inner being, in your heart?

I read about Occupy Wall Street, and I read Manuel Castells who did a lot of papers about occupy movement, so I know intellectually about how to run a occupy.

When the occupy actually happened, I discovered mostly what people really want is a garden that is thousands of miles away, but people still want to care about the sunflowers, the plants in the garden because they really want to make a difference.

Anything that can make them know for sure what is happening, like episteme, knowledge, of what is happening in the occupied parliament, as well as ways for them to share their support and distribute their support is welcomed by everybody.

It is less about the occupy, but rather about the gardening the entire society is doing for the occupied movement, the occupied parliament. It’s less about the occupiers. It’s more about this space. It’s like a garden that everybody can watch through live stream.

I’m having trouble understanding.

All the research papers talk about the people who occupy.

It’s not about the people.

It’s about the space, the occupied parliament.

It’s like a garden with new seeds of new plants.

The entire society, half a million people on the street, many more online, want to help gardening this new possibility.

It’s our feeling that the more transparent we make the space for everyone, the more participatory it is the space for everyone, the more legitimate this entire movement become day by day.

The last part, I’m sorry?

The more participatory and transparent it is, the more legitimate the movement is day by day.

After three weeks, all our demand were accepted by the head of parliament. It’s one of the rear occupy that is victorious.

What you’re saying is that this is not about social movements, about more transparency, this is about a garden? Or, is this garden a metaphor or a symbol?

It’s both a reality in a sense that it is really a physical space that people really want to know every minute what is happening in it.

It is, of course, also a metaphor because every mayor candidate at the end of 2014, if they don’t support open government, they lose mayoral election. If they do, they win sometimes surprisingly.

When you’re talking about the garden?

No, I’m talking about gardening, like taking care of a space collectively.

You can call it a stewardship or something. It doesn’t change.

I guess if you want to get academic, I can talk about collective stewardship, care, and responsibility, but the gardening is easier to understand.

Stewardship and care.

Stewardship?

Many variance.

The point is that everybody feel that they can make a difference. They feel that their efforts add to each other, rather than fight against each other when taking care of a space collectively. You see that online in Wikipedia. In occupy the parliament, this is the first time I feel a physical space have the same property as Wikipedia.

What you’re talking about is live streaming, what’s happening in Parliament?

Mm hmm.

The physical space is Parliament.

It’s occupied.

It’s occupied by…

By the people.

By the people. What does occupied mean in this case?

It means that anyone who want to talk about the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement with Beijing, which is something the MP at the time refused to deliberate. The MPs who are elected are on strike. The people have to do their job ourselves. That’s the theory anyway.

It was an agreement.

Yeah.

Anyone can get to the Parliament and share their view. There’s 20 different NGO running 20 different corners, each one talking about one aspect of the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement.

That’s the gardening, yeah.

It’s very important for you…

One of your priorities is sustainability.

The sustainable goals, of course, is the language with which we express our work.

How do these two worlds converge, the digital and the natural, for you?

These plants, these animals, these creatures, how do…?

Yeah. How do these concrete things meet with the digital?

For me, for example, the highlight, the focus of the year for Taiwan…

…is on climate action…

…and life underwater.

13 and 14 of the 17.

The digital…

…is about making the climate and life below water, which usually do not have a voice or a vote in a democracy…

…to give them…

…a equal voice…

…so that the society can recognize, for example, the highest mountain in Taiwan, almost 4,000 meters high, is called Sylvia by the indigenous people.

…Sylvia by the indigenous people.

They believe that it is a living spirit. It talks to them. It guides their vision of the community, and they can have real conversation with the mountain.

We lost that when we shifted to representational democracy.

Because, certainly, the mountain doesn’t vote.

Through digital, we can use reliable data and a cross sectoral partnership to establish things like a natural personhood to give the mountains, rivers, and so on, seats at a table using digital avatars.

Very concretely, like in New Zealand…

Yeah. In New Zealand, the Whanganui River is a legal person.

The river can sit on a board of a company.

A spirit, it’s a spirit.

The river can sue for damage.

They do so by its speakers enabled by the digital data that is accountable, and everybody see what really is the health of the river and so on, so that the speakers can speak with the spirit of the river.

What else?

What is for your essential?

As a digital minister, for me what is essential…

…is that I stay a lower case minister.

Meaning that I preach about digital…

…like a minister of a church…

…and instead of dictating anything.

That’s essential to me.

You want to share.

I want to show possibilities without taking them away from people in the name of progress.

I want to conserve all the different cultures so that they show different futures, different possibilities. I don’t want to take away their different possibilities in the name of progress for a particular culture.

What can we do with this whole dark side of the Internet, the lies, how they can replace government with lies, Trump with elections? Fake news.

In Taiwan, we say disinformation.

Which means intentional and truth that harm the public.

That harm the public. Not a minister’s image.

That harm the public, because it’s not about the government minister’s image. If you harm a government minister’s image, you are just doing good journalism.

Harming the public health and harming democracy, that is another matter.

Sorry?

That’s another matter. It’s…

You’re right. What we have found is that if we make humor a fun response…

…like there was a rumor that says…

Humor or rumor?

We counter rumor with humor.

There was a rumor that says, “Perming your hair many times a week will be subject to a $1 million fine.”

Within an hour, our prime minister spread this image.

This image says, “This rumor is not true.”

A young photo of the prime minister says, “I may be bald now, but I will not punish people with hair.”

In a small fine print that says, “What we’ve done is introducing a label requirement for hair products starting 2021.”

The prime minister now says, “If you keep perming your hair many times a week, it will not damage your pocket, but it will damage your hair.”

It’s serious. In serious cases, you can look like me. You can look at me to see what will happen to your hair.

This is very funny. Actually, most people see this before they see the rumor.

They become vaccinated.

It’s funny.

They do this with all the rumors?

Yes.

Every ministry have a team of comedians.

Whenever we see a trending rumor…

…we just make it even more trending humor.

Is this your idea?

Yeah. I call this mimetic engineering.

Memetic engineering, like genetic engineering. [laughs] I proposed this early 2017 to the cabinet meeting.

The real work is done by the comedians. I’m not a comedian. [laughs]

Your idea was yours?

Yeah. Sure.

A great idea.

Thank you.

How do you combat the…

Interference.

…interference, the Chinese interference?

For example, we have rumor that says, “Hong Kong people, young people, are paying 20 million to murder a police.”

The police from where?

From Hong Kong.

From Hong Kong.

At November last year, they were trying to spread this rumor to interfere with the Hong Kong local election and then the Taiwan presidential election.

I’m confused.

At that time, the people in Hong Kong were protesting in the street. There was a rumor that says that they are paying young people large amount of money to kill police and, in a way, to discredit the protesters for people in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The rumor actually have a photo next to a caption that says, “This 13 years old thug bought iPhones by recruiting people to do violence or something.” Taiwan FactCheck Center actually found out the photo was from Reuters, but the Reuters said nothing about paying people.

The photo is from Reuters. It’s a real photo.

The caption is disinformation.

We attributed this to the central political and legal unit of the Chinese Communist Party. This actually originates from the PRC state propaganda unit.

What we did, instead of taking this down, we make sure that every time you see this disinformation on Facebook or on other places, you see a public notice telling you that this is state propaganda from China.

The PRC propaganda is not taken down because that will create more social tension…

…and infringe on media freedom.

Facebook and other large Internet platforms agreed to put a public notice so people know where the source of that disinformation is.

How do you combat the Chinese interference within Taiwan? Is this within Taiwan?

This is mostly within Taiwan.

They are trying to make Taiwan people not sympathize with people in Hong Kong.

What did you say again? I’m sorry.

The Taiwanese received this propaganda?

Yes.

What’s the objective of this propaganda for Taiwan?

It’s to make Taiwanese people see Hong Kong protesters not as people who are for democracy.

Because the end game of the PRC interference of the propaganda is to make people in the democratic society lose confidence in democracy itself.

If people look at democracy activists and they think only about violence, then their propaganda works.

What’s happening here in the photo? She doesn’t understand what’s happening.

It was a Reuters photography that says, “A teenage anti extradition bill protester is seen during a march to demand democracy and political reform in Hong Kong.” It’s the original caption by the Reuters.

Sport shoes.

With what objective? He bought iPhones and…

This was the propaganda that tried to paint the teenagers not as people advocating democracy, but rather people who are paid to do violence, like a thug.

Sorry. They pay the…

What is your dream?

Like last night?

What is the last night dreams?

What’s your dream beyond last night?

Your goal.

Like tomorrow? [laughs] I dream of a transcultural republic of citizens.

Because in Taiwan…

What does transcultural mean?

It means being able to start from one culture and then grow into another culture, and being able to tell your own life story but from the perspective of another culture, and you can keep doing this. It’s like a freedom to move between country, except it’s between cultures.

What do you mean by cultures? Are you talking about the world or are you talking about…?

No, it’s just within Taiwan because we have more than 20 national languages.

Like in Switzerland, for example, people speak different languages. They support different football teams. They maybe sing different songs. When there comes a referendum, everybody agree with the process, and through the process, see whatever they’re working with from the lens from the other culture in Switzerland.

Are you talking about empathy or…?

Yeah, but not just empathy, because empathy, I’m still in my culture when I empathize with another culture. Transcultural means I take the perspective of the other culture.

Agree in the different countries.

Your personal dream?

My personal dream is to remain a channel and the space that enable this kind of transcultural conversations to happen. The space within is like, I don’t know, sunlight…

…that enables this kind of conversation across cultures.

Little sun.

Yeah, the flower, sunflower. [laughs]

This is the cosmos.

The prime minister, did this person, think of you, or how did she notice you?

The prime minister…

Appoint?

No.

See you.

No.

What?

Targeted you.

I didn’t understand, because we are nominated by the prime minister, but approved by the president. The people elect the president directly. I report mostly to the prime minister, but ultimately to the president. I’ve worked with many prime ministers now, but the same president, Dr. Tsai Ing wen.

Why did the prime minister choose you?

Back in 2016?

It’s because, at that time, they were trying to find someone that can connect the startup community…

…and a policy making community. They need a cultural translator.

They asked me to recruit such a person, but I cannot convince my friend to join. I give me the job.

I’m doing this for fun.

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.