- What are the first couple of things that you will do as the new head of digital policies for the Taiwanese government?
- You define yourself as a “civic hacker” and a ‘conservative anarchist’. Can you explain better what do you mean with those two expressions? How much your hacker experience and your ideas would affect your work as government official?
- You are a strong advocate of government transparency and civic participation. Why do you think they are so important and what technologies are you going to use (such as virtual reality or social platform) to make them a reality? Can you do me some concrete example? Are there any limits to their practical application?
- On one hand - as the italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio said - “Nothing risks killing off democracy more effectively than an excess of democracy”. On the other one the excess of transparency could lead to a dystopian world like the one depicted by Dave Eggers in the book The Circle. Don’t you you think that both transparency and civic participation should be limitated?
- Your father said that improved Internet speeds and good search engines software played a great part in your achievements. Do you agree? According to your opinion, how internet access is important nowadays and how do you judge projects like Internet.org?
- You say that your focus remains on promoting diversity and collaboration over competition by using technology, but the tech world is higly competitive and at the moment dominated by a couple of giants - such as Google and Facebook - who monopolize our experience online. So I am wondering: is it possible to overcome this contradiction?
- During the Sunflower Movement you were responsible for creating an online video and text live stream inside and outside the occupied legislature building. How technologies have helped the movement?
- Tsai Ing-wen won the last elections and according to the experts this victory would cause a cooling of the relationship between Taiwan and Cina. Can we consider the efforts on transparency - that involves you - as a way to remark the differences with China where Internet is actually censored?
- You have worked with the French government authorities, the Paris government and the Madrid government on digital policies. What point are we at in Europe on digital policies?
- You experienced gender dysphoria. Chelsea Manning - who is also a whistleblower and a symbol of transparency - has obtained to undergo sex reassignment surgery, but she is still struggling in prison. What do you feel to say to encourage her?
- With administrative help from the national Board of Science and Technology, I plan to introduce key elements from the “open multistakeholder governance model” as practiced by large-scale open source projects and international communities.
- Please refer to http://audreyt.org/1470967205.569537/?s=1400&d=9999 for details.
- Please refer to http://civichall.org/civicist/vtaiwan-democracy-frontier/ for concrete examples. Yes, there are many limitations of our state-of-the-art tools, which is precisely why continued research is so important.
4-1. They need to be balanced in an environment of human empathy and respect for digital rights, that’s for sure.
4-2. It was formative for me, and is best seen as a basic human right. As internet.org is not operating in Taiwan I do not have specific comments.
- This very exchange between us here proves that the limitation can be overcome.
- Please refer to https://0sdc.tw/en for a day-by-day summary.
- Open source and open data are, by nature, collaborative, so civic actors anywhere in the world are welcome to collaborate. In this mode of operation it’s unrelated to multilateral / bilateral frameworks.
- Europe is vast; it’s not possible to answer in broad brushes. I did learn a lot from the Accountability principle that shapes the GDPR, and hope that its implementation & harmonization goes smoothly.
- See the poem here: http://audreyt.org/