Should I start? My name is Eivind Røssaak. I work as a researcher at the National Library of Norway. I think we’re one of the few national libraries in the world to have a distinguished research section. We take part in national research projects in Norway. The current project is called "Digitization and Diversity", in cooperation with the Oslo Business School among others.
We look into the transformation of culture and media industries in Norway after digitization, as we call it, in a broadest possible sense. We investigate the book industry, the newspaper industry, the book industry, libraries and museums, and finally the cinema industry. We’re a team of about 20 researchers.
Here today, I represent them, and I told them I would hopefully be able to meet you. They’re very curious and very interested in both your role, what a person like you are able to do within a government structure, so to speak, and how this set-up can also possibly inspire other countries.
I have some specific questions concerning my research project, on how we look at things, and maybe some viewpoints.
To start, what’s your ambitions and dreams with your job?
That’s interesting.
Exactly. How can you fulfill other people’s ambitions through the structure you’re working in now?
They are done here, mostly, these events?
I saw your blog, but I didn’t find this page.
Could I take a picture of it?
Thank you.
Here, in this building?
This is open also?
Are they usually Taiwanese, or foreigners?
How does this work, really? Are you the alibi of openness and freedom of expression?
How does your practice affect everyday practices and routines in Taiwan? For example: My wife is from Taiwan, so I go here often. Her brother is a businessman in Yuanlin.
He says, "If you meet Audrey Tang, can you ask her, why it is so cumbersome to expand a business, set-up a new business or buy a new office, one has to go through a bunch of access points and databases to fill in a variety of forms and applications, why doesn’t the government set up one database for these kinds of application processes?"
Very good. I’ve been assessing various digital archive projects around the world. I was very fascinated by TELDAP, or the Taiwanese e-Learning and Digital Archive Project.
I think it started back in 2001, and it was a very pioneering project, because at some point, up to 150 museums, libraries, universities, cinemateques, and film archives were involved in this digitization project.
I thought it was extremely interesting. I told my colleagues about this, and I’ve been trying to follow it up. Now, it seems their website is hosted from Academia Sinica. IHowever, it seems to me, it’s not very much updated recently - is it still active?
That was also part of it, I think.
I think so, too. I also had that silo feeling again, when me and my wife tried to work through it.
Oh, interesting.
Who is hosting this, the Ministry of Culture?
Always?
Is this the same website?
That’s NPM one.
That’s TDAL? What ...?
That took over from TELDAP, in a way?
The National Central Library have a project called Taiwan Memory, also. It’s about the Japanese era. That is also a derivative then?
This is very interesting. I’m trying to write about this, but it’s very difficult to get an overview of the Taiwanese situation. Maybe we can exchange some info, if you have a good connection in the field that you could put me in touch with?
The right people in cultural ministry, perhaps, too, who initiated these derivative projects.
My wife can help translate this.
That would be great, thank you so much.
Can I ask you a question on a different subject? Because I learned about the referendum, like the one on gay marriage.
Then a friend of mine told me recently how the question was posed to the audience in Taiwan and the question was something like, "Do you think that the natural way to get married is between one man, and one woman?" and then people could say yes or no.
The question was not about gay marriage at all. It wasn’t addressed explicitly. It was a total displacement of the original question. I was very shocked when I...
Yeah, I heard about that. I thought that...
It seemed like going away from the matter. My friend told me that. To most people who didn’t know what context this was in, they would say, "Yes, that sounds natural to me." It wasn’t really about it. It sounded very strange to me. What is your comment on this, the way this referendum was done?
I guess that explains it. Then, in the end, it means that the civil code won’t be changed, according to the referendum?
Many people abroad have considered it as a little bit strange that Taiwan has a referendum concerning a...
Yeah, a legal technicality, and also questioning what is already a human right?
It’s a little peculiar, or misunderstood out there, maybe.
Interesting. Can I ask you something about Taiwan and the world, and this concerns also Norway in the world, our research project. It’s about how do you look at the influence of Facebook. It’s enormously strong now.
Norway is well-known for having almost 250 local newspapers. It’s one of the highest per capita in the world, I think. Now, many of these newspapers lose revenues, because even local companies put their ads on Facebook, rather than in the local newspapers. The newspapers lose...
It changes the infrastructure of a nation, this clash between the local and the global. In Norway, and in the EU, there are many efforts at regulating some of the so-called innovations from the tech companies in Silicon Valley.
Do you have issues like that here in Taiwan, when it comes to these global infrastructure clashes, as I would call them?
So you think there is a stronger sort of autonomous social sector, perhaps, in Taiwan, than in Norway, or in Europe? To me, it seems like EU has certainly become one of the only forces in the world who are able to confront the tendency of monopolizing the Internet by giants such as Google and Facebook in terms of protecting the local initiatives and diversity.
Is it legal now?
That’s interesting. I saw that you gave a talk at the UNs, open social enterprise. That looked like a very interesting event. I heard it was also some conflict around an issue, that China tried to stop the live stream.
