Thanks very much for…

It’s been a pleasure. I think you probably met one of my colleagues. We had a guy who’s now in South Korea. He’s called Edward White. He was based here before.

That’s beautiful. Thanks very much.

Is there somebody or a particular piece of art, literature, an idea, or whatever that is your source of inspiration?

It’s really fascinating. I just said to wrap up, sorry, can I ask you one last question?

I could go on like this for another hour.

In Taiwan, you said it’s a projection. Do you think it’s more present or it’s more dominant in policy making because of your role?

What about Western societies, either the US or in Europe? Do you see similar structures as well?

There are other societies in Asia that are highly technology literate or where digital technologies are omnipresent, thinking of South Korea, for example.

That’s a long time. Maybe wrapping up, if you look at other countries in Asia like neighboring countries, which one would resemble Taiwan most or closest when it comes to digital democracy?

How do you create or bring this kind of radical transparency to those structures? I don’t see how that can work.

To what extent do these things work in parts of society and politics that are more traditional? I’m thinking of the soft underbelly of talent politics. If you go to some more rural areas in the south, there’s still very, very strong and deep-rooted networks with corruption and people just ...

If we try to get back to something slightly more concrete again, can you share some thoughts on whether there are lessons to draw for other democratic societies on how to use technology for government or to improve government services and to improve the relationship between government and society in ...

You have a very quick brain. You have the bandwidth to do this, but many people don’t. In modern society and with the modern politics and in today’s world, it’s so complicated with the mere body of knowledge that is there that you could potentially try to acquire. It just ...

We’ve talked about the infodemic before, information operations, and disinformation, all this stuff. Do you ever worry that this very open structure and wide participation, that it could somehow get turned against democracy?

In past speeches and stuff, you’ve talked about the importance of radical transparency and civil participation. There was particularly one TED Talk where you spoke about that. Can you explain what those terms mean and why they are so important to society?

That’s been very helpful for your development. I can see that.

At the time, wouldn’t you have been required to participate in exams? There must have been records of which students need to participate in if you’re not there.

That’s amazing. That was extremely unusual at the time.

What made you decide then later to leave school?

That’s ideal. How understanding were your parents of that? Were they technology literate? You said your uncles were.

How much younger than you?

At the time.

It’s very labor-intensive.

When you were drawing on paper and typing on that paper keyboard, how would you have computational thinking? Because I’m not a technology person, I find that just really hard to grasp.

When did you get that personal computer?

Oh, wow. OK, yes.

What year are we talking about?

Where did that come from?

Can we take a big step back, and can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how it all started? I understand that you decided to discontinue or drop out of school very early. Maybe let’s go back a little even further. Where does your passion for ...

I see. Sometimes, if you walk around in the outdoors, and at the beach, or in nature, you might want to despair…

Yeah. When do you think it’s really going to work out? I don’t see people…

This is kind of off-topic, but now that you’ve mentioned the straws and national identity drink, banning the straws, that was in the news a long time ago, that that had been decided.

OK, yeah. If you had to explain to her or someone uninitiated how your future work agenda is formulated, is that…does it always come bottom-up and from the social sector, or do you sometimes also make some plan and set some priorities? How do you plan that on what to ...

If you had to explain to someone who is really not in these circles at all, like, I don’t know, someone who is much older and is not…

That would be a challenge in any country probably. [laughs] For example, the Presidential Hackathon, how was that developed or how did that start?

Judging from what you’ve seen since the Sunflower Movement and Taiwan society embracing all this stuff, what is your expectation, like how long it will take to change that, all of Taiwan government, to make them more capable in terms of digital technology and responding to these things in a ...

We’ve still seen over the last two years, well, maybe since in the run-up to the last local elections, we’ve still seen the government here sometimes being a bit helpless in the face of a disinformation campaign. How do I square that with all the work you’ve been doing?

You talked about the infodemic. I think the reality of widespread disinformation campaigns in Western countries, this only became a mainstream issue after the last US presidential election and all the talk about Russia and so on. When did you identify this problem here for the first time?

I’ve heard you say that on stage before. [laughs] Now, can you maybe give a concrete example of one project or one of your areas of work where you have implemented that in the past couple of years?

That’s really interesting. Now, you have called this whole complex a digital democracy. Can you explain, for the uninitiated, what that means? What’s the definition of that? What does it mean to you personally?

How large a part of Taiwan society do you think is on board or involved with that now? Clearly, Sunflower Movement was young people or a group of young people, but here, we have an aging society, actually, a rapidly aging society. What about the rest of the people?

For me, this is surprising because sometimes as a resident, it feels in some areas that Taiwan’s civil service can be bureaucratic, and can be quite conservative. It’s surprising that they were enlightened enough to institutionalize a mechanism like this.

Many of the people who were involved in that were quite young, so we’re talking about one generation there.

Can you discuss a little bit, from your previous work around technology and participation in digital democracy in Taiwan, do you think that somehow prepared Taiwan society, and maybe also Taiwan government, for how to deal with technology in fighting the pandemic?

I think we’re going to talk about that.

Were you consulted, or did you help on setting up that system for finding or identifying the contact persons at the time?

Yeah. I think they docked at Jilong at the end of January, and then the outbreak came a week later.

Early February, that’s also when this cruise ship incident happened.

When did you have that kind of discussion?