Well, we have always worked with people around the world, including people from the other side of the Taiwan Strait, to show them exactly how to deepen democracy. And in Taiwan, even during the martial law era, even before we had democracy, there were already strong movements in cooperatives, in the consumers’ unions, in the local spiritual traditions, and so on. And so all these, I think, are very useful even for people who currently do not enjoy freedom of expression, freedom of religion, or freedom of political expression. They can also organize using more or less the same techniques that I have just shared: broad listening, AI for assistive intelligence, and so on. They can learn to organize even only in a local communal fashion. And the fact-checking network that Taiwan built very successfully to counter the infodemic can also be adopted by people in authoritarian regions, maybe first only checking food and safety issues or disturbing rumors about environmental pollution and so on. And once they build the civic muscle, of course, then it paves the way for more political possibilities downstream, just as Taiwan did during the eighties.

Keyboard shortcuts

j previous speech k next speech