Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day, a podcast
Speaker 1: that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a legal status.
Speaker 1: This season is all about tech and how it can
Speaker 1: bring us together instead of tearing us apart. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you the people using technology for so much more than
Speaker 1: revenue and user growth. They're using it to help us.
Speaker 1: Citizen Here in the US, the idea of social media
Speaker 1: and democracy, well, I'm not sure they even belong in
Speaker 1: the same sentence. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and read it.
Speaker 1: They tend to just be echo chambers with an abundant
Speaker 1: supply of the most niche groups, so you can be
Speaker 1: surrounded by your own choir. But there is a country
Speaker 1: where this isn't necessarily the case. Today. We're going to Taiwan.
Speaker 1: I repeat thai Wan. The Taiwanese government has essentially put
Speaker 1: its entire democratic system online and it works now. Of course,
Speaker 1: they have some exceptional policies in place, like they've got
Speaker 1: universal broadband as a human right, virtual town halls and
Speaker 1: a phone line get this where citizens can talk to
Speaker 1: real people in the government about their problems. And if
Speaker 1: that still isn't enough for a Taiwanese citizen to have
Speaker 1: their voice heard, they can schedule on one on one
Speaker 1: meeting with the person at the center of all this.
Speaker 1: Every Tuesday from ten am to ten pm, the Digital
Speaker 1: Minister of Taiwan, Audrey Tongue, holds open office hours. Her
Speaker 1: only request, you got to allow the conversation to be
Speaker 1: recorded and uploaded online in the name of radical transparency.
Speaker 1: And look, I'm not a citizen of Taiwan, but she
Speaker 1: pen sold me in for some office hours of our own.
Speaker 1: I say this without exaggeration. Audrey's accomplishments started at birth
Speaker 1: due to a heart defect. As a toddler, she had
Speaker 1: to train her body to keep her heart rate down
Speaker 1: by practicing Daoist meditation techniques as a toddler. And when
Speaker 1: it came to her education after discovering the Internet, that
Speaker 1: did drop out once when I was eight, once when
Speaker 1: I was ten, once when I was twelve. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I've had three kindergarten, six primary schools, and one
Speaker 1: year of middle high serial drop out, if you will.
Speaker 1: When I was in middle school, student was for a scene.
Speaker 1: I talked to the head of the school saying, look,
Speaker 1: I discovered this thing called the wild Web, and I
Speaker 1: found out that the cutting edge knowledge is being created
Speaker 1: on the web, and my textbooks were willfully out of date.
Speaker 1: The head of the school, after she listened to me
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes describing this new thing called
Speaker 1: the wild web, she said, okay, tomorrow, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to go to my school anymore. Instead of eight
Speaker 1: hours after school, you can't spend sixteen hours a day
Speaker 1: during these She started her first company at age fifteen,
Speaker 1: and that eventually led to her joining a community of
Speaker 1: civic hackers technologists to innovate without permission, but in this
Speaker 1: case not for financial gain or to prove they can
Speaker 1: break into a system, but instead for the public good.
Speaker 1: In after a series of protests in Taiwan, she was
Speaker 1: appointed Taiwan's first Digital Minister, going from outsider to insider
Speaker 1: hacker to cabinet minister. She's a believer in an advocate
Speaker 1: for open data, open governance, and civil society government collaboration
Speaker 1: without further ado. Audrey Tom Hello, Audrey, greetings, good luck
Speaker 1: at time, good local time. Nice to meet you. Thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us. You are the first cabinet minister
Speaker 1: I will have ever had on any show of mine.
Speaker 1: This is very exciting for me. Here's too many more
Speaker 1: so it sounds like you grew up online? Is that
Speaker 1: a fair way of describing choosing your education to happen
Speaker 1: this way? Especially? That's right, I would say I I
Speaker 1: migrated to the Internet when I was fourteen ish, so
Speaker 1: I'm not a digital native, but a young immigrants, if
Speaker 1: you will, young digital immigrant, digital migrant. So so what
Speaker 1: has that meant for you? To have such early, intense
Speaker 1: and regular access to this new world formerly new world?
Speaker 1: And it's time? I was motivated by a open research
Speaker 1: questions why do people who have never met each other
Speaker 1: trust each other so quickly online? It's a phenomena called
Speaker 1: swift trust. Of course, in the more antisocial coiners of
Speaker 1: social media, it also means swift distrust. People come to
Speaker 1: hate each other very intensely. Yes, we do. How does
Speaker 1: that come about? I was very much motivated by that question,
Speaker 1: so I found it a startup A year after I
Speaker 1: dropped out and become a kind of serial entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: explored through various ways. My first startup was the Taiwanese
Speaker 1: equivalent of eBay, and later on moved to found many
Speaker 1: other companies and all explored how to get people trust
Speaker 1: each other reasonably online instead of on the spaces where
Speaker 1: it's more antisocial that that's been my research topic for
Speaker 1: the past twenty five years. I guess what are your
Speaker 1: conclusions right now about the answer to that question, Well,
Speaker 1: it needs to be fast, fair, and fun simultaneously. If
Speaker 1: a space is fast in getting people's ideas into collective intelligence,
Speaker 1: if the common good the shared value is derived quickly
Speaker 1: in a fair fashion. And finally, if for each minute
Speaker 1: of participation people feel there's an intrinsic fun in it,
Speaker 1: then the phosphere fun ensures approse social interaction online fast, fair,
Speaker 1: and fun. They all start with F, so there's like
Speaker 1: a poetry to it. Like it the fun part. For example,
Speaker 1: we apply to our counter disinformation strategy and time when
Speaker 1: they call it humor over a rumor, Oh oh, I
Speaker 1: like that one. UM. Early in your career, you were
Speaker 1: part of the formation of something known as GOV zero.
Speaker 1: What was GOV zero and why was it needed? So
Speaker 1: GO zero was and still is. UM this idea of
Speaker 1: forking the government. Now fork in free software means taking something,
Speaker 1: not hitting it off, but taking it to a different direction,
Speaker 1: with the hope, of course, that one day it's merged
Speaker 1: back in. So for all the government websites in taide
Speaker 1: one something that g o V that ke w oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that gov websites. Yeah right. The zero folks just built
Speaker 1: parallel shadow government websites. So for each digital service that
Speaker 1: the people doesn't quite like, into the protesting they demonstrate
Speaker 1: by changing oh to a zero in the browser bar,
Speaker 1: and you get into the shadow government, which is more fast,
Speaker 1: fair and fun. Okay, I want to play that back
Speaker 1: and make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. Everyone listening
Speaker 1: to this, we understand the concept of a government website
Speaker 1: at that geo V. As you mentioned, they're not always
Speaker 1: the greatest websites that many of us have experienced, So
Speaker 1: go zero with you all. Initially we're doing was building
Speaker 1: that zero websites, you know, that were mirror versions of
Speaker 1: these government websites, offering the same information and services, but better, faster, fairer,
Speaker 1: and more fun. That's exactly right. So for example, last February,
Speaker 1: we were rationing out medical great masks. We all remember
Speaker 1: the mask rationing. Yes, that's right, And and there's there's
Speaker 1: a government website that tallies the availability of masks in
Speaker 1: each and every pharmacy. Now, the equivalent of zero website
Speaker 1: is an interactive map where you can see very quickly
Speaker 1: which pharmacy near your residents still have some instack. And
Speaker 1: as you queue in line, there's also chatbots voice assistance
Speaker 1: that would ensure this fair distribution of masks. And it
Speaker 1: is of course more fun. And this entire effort, this
Speaker 1: this civic hacking effort with all volunteer that's right, Uh,
Speaker 1: the volunteers. The number in like tens of thousands. And
Speaker 1: once people think of something that the government isn't doing
Speaker 1: very well, instead of protesting, we just do a demonstration
Speaker 1: as a demo, like showing everyone that hey, this could
Speaker 1: be done this much better. That's okay. That's a novel,
Speaker 1: a creative and hyper useful form of activism where you
Speaker 1: just you show them up and you do it better.
Speaker 1: I want to know how you got into politics. A
Speaker 1: big moment for you was the Sunflower Revolution. Right, several
Speaker 1: hundred Taiwanese students are still occupying the island's parliament. They're
Speaker 1: protesting against a wide ranging trade deal signed between the
Speaker 1: Taiwanese government and China. A much seventies. One single congressman declare,
Speaker 1: without anything, liberation. We've seen thirty seconds now don't let
Speaker 1: the name Sunflower Revolution fool you. The path to a
Speaker 1: digital democracy wasn't easy. As is often the case, big
Speaker 1: change takes an upright in March, a group of students
Speaker 1: climbed over the fence and occupied Taiwan's equivalent of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Capitol building. Now, before your mind goes there is not
Speaker 1: what you think. They didn't have guns. They had ethernet
Speaker 1: cads and a plan to talk and be hurt students
Speaker 1: far from you know, violently protesting. They occupied the Parliament's
Speaker 1: t Terrian seat and started to delibrates the C S
Speaker 1: S T A to trade agreement line by line with
Speaker 1: anyone who cared to show up. Yeah, they were literally
Speaker 1: reading through parliamentary decisions line by line in hopes of
Speaker 1: finding consensus. But law enforcement they didn't see it that way.
Speaker 1: M M. Their solution radical transparency. Audrey live stream the
Speaker 1: occupation to the streets of Taipei for the public to witness,
Speaker 1: so that people can see before their own eyes on
Speaker 1: a large projection screen outside the street. Was actually happening
Speaker 1: was a deliberation led by citizens within the parliament. So
Speaker 1: there's no room for rumor to grab. Had we not
Speaker 1: wired up the streets around the parliament. There will be
Speaker 1: cols because people will believe in for example, the rumors
Speaker 1: about the students. We've seen the parliament was being attacked.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of people who want to rush the
Speaker 1: police because they falsely believed that the students were in addenda.
Speaker 1: But because we weard it up sufficiently quickly, people can
Speaker 1: check that it's actually not what's happening. This moment was
Speaker 1: basically analog of zero. Instead of a shadow website, they
Speaker 1: created a whole shadow parliament, showing the politicians in their
Speaker 1: own house how it's done. And they did this day
Speaker 1: in and day out, working to come up with their
Speaker 1: own rough consensus on each issue, including the trade agreement. Then,
Speaker 1: after three weeks of occupation, Parliament agreed to provide oversight
Speaker 1: for trade deals with China and the occupation ended. But
Speaker 1: the movement didn't stop there. In fact, many leaders in
Speaker 1: government got on board. Two years later, the election outsted
Speaker 1: the ruling party and made history by electing the first
Speaker 1: female president sigh England. The government realized they had to
Speaker 1: listen to the people, and who did they turn to?
Speaker 1: Audrey Tom. This led to her role as Taiwan's first
Speaker 1: Digital Minister at just thirty five years old, opening the
Speaker 1: doors of Parliament to the hackers, the civic hackers, the
Speaker 1: civic hackers. That's a very important acknowledges. Yes, not all hackers,
Speaker 1: civic hackers. After the break of poetry reading by Minister Tongue, Yes, poetry.
Speaker 1: You're not just a minister in department. You're the digital minister.
Speaker 1: What does that job mean? And was there a digital
Speaker 1: minister before you? No, I'm the first digital minister. I
Speaker 1: wrote my own job description. Can you share your I
Speaker 1: think I've read some of this job description, but can
Speaker 1: you share your job description with me? Sure it's pinned
Speaker 1: on my Twitter actually, so I'll just read it. When
Speaker 1: we see the Internet of things, let's make it an
Speaker 1: internet of bees. We see virtual reality, let's make it
Speaker 1: a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make
Speaker 1: it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make
Speaker 1: it about human experience. And whenever we hear that the
Speaker 1: singularity is, let us always remember the plurality is here.
Speaker 1: That's poetry, it is, I mean, politician, you're just call
Speaker 1: yourself a poetician. You know you are full of innovations
Speaker 1: and surprises. Minister One of the things that I've heard
Speaker 1: about and the most excited to spend our time on
Speaker 1: today is V Taiwan. Can you define what V Taiwan
Speaker 1: is and how it's used in your society. V Taiwan
Speaker 1: was actually the work of Meat as civic hacker UM
Speaker 1: and I became Digital Minister around two years after which
Speaker 1: so during those two years, for example, we worked on
Speaker 1: a way to get people's voices where people can write
Speaker 1: their own nuanced ideas about emerging issues like at the
Speaker 1: time Uber. When Uber first came to Taiwan, they work
Speaker 1: with drivers with no professional license called sharing economy, and
Speaker 1: this of course incited many texts chriver to start the protest,
Speaker 1: and instead of people just shouting at each other like
Speaker 1: a showdown, we built a space called polish through Echaiwan
Speaker 1: project where people can say I care about insurance and
Speaker 1: up voted and downloaded each other, but with no reply button,
Speaker 1: and then the rough consensus, just like in the Sunflower movement,
Speaker 1: end up getting ratified. So Uber is now a legal
Speaker 1: taxi company in Taiwan. You're describing an online community platform
Speaker 1: where people are sharing their opinions, their thoughts, their feedback
Speaker 1: or public services sometimes or private services like Uber, but
Speaker 1: you're using terms like rough consensus. And I experience a
Speaker 1: platform that lets me share my opinions about all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. It's called Twitter, it's called Facebook, but the
Speaker 1: word consensus never comes to mind. So can you talk
Speaker 1: to me about how the Taiwan, in doing this surveying
Speaker 1: of the public and collecting all kinds of input, doesn't
Speaker 1: descend into a Twitter or Facebook like disaster zone. Well,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, there's no reply button, right, no reply
Speaker 1: button that'll do it? Okay, Yeah, that that's that's really
Speaker 1: d D trick um Impolis, which you can check out,
Speaker 1: is a free software tool instead of the reply button. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a vote down vote, and there's this visualization. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: I know this is a podcast and you can't see
Speaker 1: the visualization's Audrey talking about. So I'm gonna help you.
Speaker 1: V Taiwan uses something called quadratic voting to build rough consensus.
Speaker 1: Think of two axes, and X that runs horizontally and
Speaker 1: a Y that runs vertically. Yeah, I'm taking you back
Speaker 1: to middle school. The X axis is your yea or nay,
Speaker 1: and the y is how strongly you feel about your yea,
Speaker 1: your name. So Let's say your town is voting on
Speaker 1: a citywide compost collection measure. On one end of your
Speaker 1: X axis would be a yes. Compost on the other end, Nope,
Speaker 1: I ain't composting. But it doesn't stop there because the
Speaker 1: Y axis gauges how strong do you feel about those votes.
Speaker 1: Maybe you plan to vote no because you don't know
Speaker 1: that much about composting, but you heard it might stink
Speaker 1: up the city. You'd probably fall somewhere in the middle
Speaker 1: of the Y axis. The same could be said for
Speaker 1: someone who's voting yes. They don't know much, but they
Speaker 1: hear it's quote unquote good for the environment, they too
Speaker 1: would fall some where in the middle of the Y axes.
Speaker 1: Once again, it doesn't stop there because users can continue
Speaker 1: to submit statements on composting, and the more you participate
Speaker 1: by up or down voting those statements, the more refined
Speaker 1: your placement gets within this grid. So composting will take
Speaker 1: the equivalent of one million cars off the road that
Speaker 1: might lead to an up vote, or the budget will
Speaker 1: come out of the parks department that could lead to
Speaker 1: a down vote. The point is, as users start to
Speaker 1: form opinions on composting, wherever you fall on these scales,
Speaker 1: you get placed within one of the four quadrants, and
Speaker 1: as the votes tally up, you start to see clusters
Speaker 1: of like minded people, clusters that would be invisible to
Speaker 1: you in a purely binary guest no world. And that's
Speaker 1: where the rough consensus begins to form. This moment brought
Speaker 1: to you by Edge of Tune day, You're welcome. So
Speaker 1: it became a challenge, a game to find the things
Speaker 1: that could convince people at the other aisle, and people
Speaker 1: managed to agree on so after three weeks or so
Speaker 1: of unlike deliberation, we would end up always with this
Speaker 1: picture where people agree to disagree on a few ideological
Speaker 1: things like whether Ubert qualified as sharing economy or just
Speaker 1: give economy, But for most of the ideas, most people
Speaker 1: agree actually with most of their neighbors. It's just a
Speaker 1: more antisocial corner of social media or mainstream media does
Speaker 1: not report those consensus around registration, insurance, not undercutting exist meters,
Speaker 1: and so on. I've heard many social scientists say that
Speaker 1: we actually agree a lot more than we know, and
Speaker 1: it sounds like you've got a system which visualizes that.
Speaker 1: It shows us how close we are to our neighbors,
Speaker 1: even if they're not our physical neighbors. Is it fair
Speaker 1: to say you've kind of gamified consensus building. Yes, it's fair.
Speaker 1: And I would also say that people compete to get
Speaker 1: other people to agree to them, not by posting compromises,
Speaker 1: but posting innovations like new ideas that would unify people
Speaker 1: previously of different aisles. But if people keep shouting at
Speaker 1: each other on the ideological points and there's no remaining
Speaker 1: bandwidth to innovate like that, If the government is faced
Speaker 1: with one hundred decisions and kind of a random easy
Speaker 1: number legislative policy regulatory for how many of them are
Speaker 1: you using v Taiwan two be open to citizen input.
Speaker 1: So the answer is all the petitions, all the regulations,
Speaker 1: all the budget items are up for public commentary and debate.
Speaker 1: After I moved into the cabinet as the Digital Minister, Vita,
Speaker 1: I want kind of get merged back into the governments
Speaker 1: and we call it Join Join the g O v
Speaker 1: the t W. We also have a petition side like
Speaker 1: we the People, where people can post new ideas. Instead
Speaker 1: of waiting for the government to propose, people can propose
Speaker 1: their own ideas, like changing the time zone of Taiwan
Speaker 1: or banning plastic straws for bubble sees takeouts, which are
Speaker 1: a real petitions. Uh. And then um, they get the
Speaker 1: ministry of point by point answer if they get five
Speaker 1: joining signature and and how you can since my um, surprise,
Speaker 1: my incredulity even a little bit, How seriously do people
Speaker 1: who work in government take all this beautiful visualized consensus
Speaker 1: of the people who don't work in government. Is it
Speaker 1: just like, oh, that's cute, the public wants something anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do what I want to do? Or is
Speaker 1: there accountability to follow through on these public consensus conclusions? Well,
Speaker 1: if the petition did not get five thousand signatures, then
Speaker 1: often it gets ignored. That's of course true, because it
Speaker 1: means it more or less serves only a handful of people,
Speaker 1: and these people have not yet articulated the common purpose.
Speaker 1: So the majority of petitions did not meet five thousands thresholds.
Speaker 1: But after it meets the five thousand threshold, there is
Speaker 1: regulatory level commitment from each minister that they will send
Speaker 1: a team what we call participation officers or pos, and
Speaker 1: around a hundred of these people in each ministry. They
Speaker 1: are legally bound to answer it in the point by
Speaker 1: point fashion. And if this spuns across different ministries or
Speaker 1: could only be solved in the inter agency way, then
Speaker 1: I personally have most collaborative meetings twice amount to get
Speaker 1: those ideas from the civil society that benefits more than
Speaker 1: one ministry, because a single ministry cannot promise to answer
Speaker 1: them all. What type of regulation or rule or government action?
Speaker 1: More broadly are you most proud of or excited about?
Speaker 1: That is the product of a v Taiwan process. One
Speaker 1: of the earlier successes is, of course the ratification of
Speaker 1: UBER and later on extending that to a more general
Speaker 1: platform economic principle. And there's also many environment related issues
Speaker 1: like banning plastic strolls from take how the public say
Speaker 1: that's actually something that's ratified And the petitioner was I
Speaker 1: think not even eighteen, just turned seventeen when she petitioned that.
Speaker 1: How do you make sure that a system like this
Speaker 1: is it gamed or abused? Someone just gets a bunch
Speaker 1: of bots or a bunch of their friends too jack
Speaker 1: up the activity on a particular petition point to make
Speaker 1: sure it gets taken seriously, quote unquote, First of all,
Speaker 1: one has to register using the SMS number if someone
Speaker 1: try to get five thousand SIM cards, they will get
Speaker 1: noticed by the NIM only launching folks very quickly. So
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about that. And I imagine you know
Speaker 1: those people. Yeah, I do have those people, that's right.
Speaker 1: So each person, of course participate using the SMS number,
Speaker 1: but they can to student names as so the petitioner,
Speaker 1: the young one that's this plastic straw banding. We only
Speaker 1: knew her as I love elephants and elephants love me
Speaker 1: for a very long time until she decided to show up.
Speaker 1: This is killing me. This is amazing. Um. What do
Speaker 1: you think v Taiwan has done for the relationship of
Speaker 1: the Taiwanese people to each other and to their government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that this idea of social innovation. Previously, people think,
Speaker 1: oh they can join this community in their neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: to maybe redesign the park together or things like that.
Speaker 1: But I guess joint platform show that people who care
Speaker 1: about the same thing can also get this neighborhood's relationship
Speaker 1: very quickly online and act in a way that they
Speaker 1: would on the physical town hall. We have this digital
Speaker 1: public infrastructure that functions the same as the town hall
Speaker 1: so that they're not forced to deliberate about important civic
Speaker 1: topics in the digital equivalent of nightclubs like Facebook. You
Speaker 1: just call Facebook and nightclub. This is just amazing. It's amazing. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many future forward looking innovations you
Speaker 1: could put into one person into one position, but you were,
Speaker 1: you were going for some kind of metal, some kind
Speaker 1: of gold medal for maximum innovation in civics and people
Speaker 1: powered government. Uh. We we got blockchain up in here
Speaker 1: now with the theory, and we got quadratic voting, We've
Speaker 1: got participatory budgeting, civic hacking. This is like the mecca
Speaker 1: of of innovation and government services. But I also I'm
Speaker 1: trying to understand how within Taiwan do you have a
Speaker 1: sense for what share of the public is engaged in
Speaker 1: this new digitally enabled form of self governing. I believe
Speaker 1: most of the people are aware that they can actually
Speaker 1: set agenda for the ministry level decisions around pandemic prevention,
Speaker 1: especially just by picking up the phone. So a lot
Speaker 1: majority of people, I would say tens of millions of people,
Speaker 1: because our ENTI bearer is really low. If you pick
Speaker 1: up your phone and call it this toll free number
Speaker 1: one night you too, and speak your mind about how
Speaker 1: you would like our counter epidemic effort to get better,
Speaker 1: and a sympathetic listener from the call center records that
Speaker 1: and write it up, and the next day on the
Speaker 1: two PM press conference, your idea may be implemented very
Speaker 1: quickly on this live stream because we've lowered the participation threshold,
Speaker 1: and the phone lines just flooded with like foul language
Speaker 1: and hates because I'm just trying to imagine it's deployed
Speaker 1: in the US, and I don't hear thoughtful rants, you
Speaker 1: know people. I just see people screaming falsehoods into their
Speaker 1: phone all day. Yeah, and that's because of the frustration
Speaker 1: of not getting properly listened to. Right, it's venting, uh,
Speaker 1: this previous frustration. But because there's more than two million
Speaker 1: cars last year alone, we take them very seriously. Right
Speaker 1: at last April, there was a young boy that calls saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you're rationing out mass But all I got was pink
Speaker 1: ones and all the boys in my class got navy blue.
Speaker 1: Once I don't want to wear pink to school, I
Speaker 1: refused to go to school. Do something about it. And
Speaker 1: then the very next day on two p M press conference,
Speaker 1: all the medical officers, including Ministruction were Pink and Mstr Chin.
Speaker 1: That helps. Mr even said Pink Panther was my childhood hero.
Speaker 1: So so the boy became the most employing his class
Speaker 1: for oh, he has the color that the heroes were,
Speaker 1: and the heroes hero it is there and and our
Speaker 1: the idea that I could call and leave a voicemail
Speaker 1: and know that I was heard because a pretty high
Speaker 1: ranking government official. In fact, many the next day in
Speaker 1: this case are referencing my message. Do you have have
Speaker 1: some very widely deployed natural language processing running too? Makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this audio not just the texting and
Speaker 1: the typing I get it's already kind of a machine readable,
Speaker 1: but just a bunch of audio files as well. How
Speaker 1: are you processing that? And very large call center and
Speaker 1: it's not voicemail. Actually I think more than nine of
Speaker 1: them get into a sympathetic listener. So um, it's like
Speaker 1: a human being a human being professional and listening and
Speaker 1: answering in real time, okay, And we work on the
Speaker 1: assistant to support them like frequently ask questions and so on.
Speaker 1: By the end of the day, is that people who
Speaker 1: want to contribute to the society. Many volunteers actually working
Speaker 1: in these call sentens. Okay, okay, this is Um. I
Speaker 1: I don't know whether I'm very proud of what you're
Speaker 1: doing in Taiwan or just exceedingly disappointed at what we're
Speaker 1: not doing in the state. The fact that I'm responding
Speaker 1: with such shock and awe and your delivery is just
Speaker 1: the calmest thing, like like it's natural, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're just staff, sympathetic people on phone lines for our
Speaker 1: citizens to talk like. I can't even finish saying that
Speaker 1: without laughing. Again. Congratulations, minister, Um. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: about presidential Hackathan? Sure? And I'm aware that we're in
Speaker 1: the future. Um, thank you for acknowledging that I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely on another planet, just in a different time zone.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're time zone travelers. So yeah. The presidential
Speaker 1: Every year, the president gave trophies to five teams, each
Speaker 1: one working on the sort of good zero like civic
Speaker 1: innovation for three months and through quadratic voting, Uh, they
Speaker 1: proved that their ideas has marriage in a smaller region.
Speaker 1: Helemeta Sin for example, using a app to motivate people
Speaker 1: instead of buying new plastic bottles using existing bortos to
Speaker 1: get free refills from the local community to reduce common footprint.
Speaker 1: East Monscale experiments, once they received the trophy from the President,
Speaker 1: certainly become presidential promises, so I, like any executive agenda,
Speaker 1: must be implemented within the presidential term. For example, readd
Speaker 1: our entire universal healthcare system which is pretty to begin with,
Speaker 1: to allow cure code helen medicine, which is very useful
Speaker 1: not just during the pandemic, but also for the remote islands,
Speaker 1: indigenous places and so one and all thanks to a
Speaker 1: small scale experiment by a very remote island which suffer
Speaker 1: a helicopter crash and decided to innovate. If you've been
Speaker 1: running the hakathon for four years and there are five winners,
Speaker 1: that's twenty winning ideas. That's right. How many of those
Speaker 1: twenty have actually been implemented by the president or other
Speaker 1: parts of the government. UM I believe nineteen are implemented
Speaker 1: right now. And the other one because it requires collaboration
Speaker 1: with the anti money laundering people. It's a mission learning
Speaker 1: algorithm to preemptively, like Minority Report, identify money laundering activities
Speaker 1: that still in the works. Are there people who are
Speaker 1: opposed to what you're doing with within Taiwanese society? Are
Speaker 1: there folks like this, we don't want this, We don't
Speaker 1: want the computers use this way, This is too much
Speaker 1: for government? Like is there resistance to whatso far sounds
Speaker 1: like a very happy, very positive, very effective experience. In
Speaker 1: a sense, we are the resistance so um to to
Speaker 1: answer a question directly, there are people who initially feel
Speaker 1: threatened by the vito it's use of deliberative democracy, and
Speaker 1: they are the professional representatives in the parliament or city council.
Speaker 1: They rightfully feel excluded from this crowd law agenda setting thing,
Speaker 1: and kind of fear that it will create populism to
Speaker 1: take their well deliberated norms away and just pass whatever
Speaker 1: the majority of people seems happy with and destroy democracy
Speaker 1: and things like that. So it was a real fear
Speaker 1: in twenty four seine. But then after twenty sixteen, which
Speaker 1: I became the Digital Ministry, introduced those platforms, they start
Speaker 1: to see that we're not taking over the legislative power.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is essentially doing additional research and development
Speaker 1: before something that's ratified. What we've done is to get
Speaker 1: people's real feelings which cannot all get passed through the
Speaker 1: parliament to get people with the real feelings and needs
Speaker 1: and requirements and want to also join as co creators
Speaker 1: to propose solution by at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the allocation of budget resources, the presidential mandates and so on,
Speaker 1: these remain intact and democratically accountable. So in design thinking terms,
Speaker 1: we take care of the defined and the discovery part
Speaker 1: the first diamond, but the development and the delivery are
Speaker 1: still in the representative democracy. We have a similar process
Speaker 1: here in the US. It doesn't involve as much technology.
Speaker 1: It's a group of people called lobbyists and they figure
Speaker 1: out what the legislators are supposed to do. It doesn't
Speaker 1: always match the will of the people on the ground,
Speaker 1: but it's probably just some bugs in the code and
Speaker 1: we're working it out. I'm sure we'll be as representative
Speaker 1: as Taiwan sometime in the near future. It's the great
Speaker 1: American experiment. Now I know it doesn't sound like it,
Speaker 1: but I can confirm that we do indeed live on
Speaker 1: the same planet when we come back. We talked about
Speaker 1: Audrey's future outlook on the time when the government and
Speaker 1: how this can hopefully be applied to the United States.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, where do you see Taiwan's government in twenty years, Um,
Speaker 1: it will be higher, I guess, stronger, faster together, higher
Speaker 1: by about sixty centimeters. Um. It's a joke because towns
Speaker 1: caught between the Eurasian plate and the Philippines sea plate
Speaker 1: on the signs, and we got a lot of earthquakes
Speaker 1: when they bumped together. But through yeah, I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: was like, I got a rising sea levels jokes. It's
Speaker 1: rising plate tectonics joke. So it's rising faster than sea
Speaker 1: levels at this moment anyway. So yeah, but but those
Speaker 1: earthquakes um is metaphoric. Right. We're caught between very different
Speaker 1: ideologies UM. For example, the privacy and personal data protection.
Speaker 1: We've got people who strongly believe in a more civiliance
Speaker 1: capitalism ideas of using data and it's called the US style.
Speaker 1: But there's also a sizable chunk who remember and believes
Speaker 1: in the authority Hearian days in Taiwan, who believe in
Speaker 1: a more state controlled, state sponsored way of data use
Speaker 1: and so on. So we have to endure those ideological
Speaker 1: earthquakes and always innovate. For example, merriage equality, I think
Speaker 1: we're still the only Asian jurisdiction that implemented merriage quality.
Speaker 1: We use the joint platform, among other methods, to get
Speaker 1: people's collaborative preferences into a new invention where when two
Speaker 1: same sex people wed, they only wed as individuals, but
Speaker 1: their families don't wet. There's no kinship relation. And this
Speaker 1: innovation UH is felt as good enough for everyone. So
Speaker 1: after twenty yes, after many such innovations at the top
Speaker 1: of Taiwan the Yushan Mountain, which grows by three sentimentaries
Speaker 1: every year, I guess we'll just keep growing and pointing
Speaker 1: sat work. Where do you see UH the U S
Speaker 1: government In twenty years, I guess the great American experiment
Speaker 1: of reinventing democracy digitally will will catch up. I mean,
Speaker 1: there really is no reason why people have to viciously
Speaker 1: attack each other online. It's not a function of the
Speaker 1: people or the water, is the function of the space. UH.
Speaker 1: In design terms, this is UH an anti social design
Speaker 1: or pro social design. So once people get into this
Speaker 1: um habit of posting online, I guess people will be
Speaker 1: able to make the difference between the digital equivalent of
Speaker 1: town halls, the public infrastructure that I've just mentioned, which
Speaker 1: in TWI sixteen, for the first time in Taiwan's history,
Speaker 1: is classified as infrastructure budget. And I understand that the
Speaker 1: US to doing something very similar at this very moment,
Speaker 1: and people would not feel natural anymore to have pacivic
Speaker 1: discussion in the digital nightclubs with you know, people shouting
Speaker 1: to get heard and smoke field rooms with toxic drinks
Speaker 1: and private bouncers. Toxic drinks and private bouncers. Again, the
Speaker 1: best description of Facebook I've ever heard. This idea of
Speaker 1: rough consensus. To me, it feels I like it because
Speaker 1: it's ambitious with humility, right, you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of folks think we want everybody to agree with
Speaker 1: each other. Will never get that, so why bother and
Speaker 1: the good enough nature of the consensus. We're in desperate
Speaker 1: need of even rough consensus here in the US we
Speaker 1: have a very big political divide. Are there things you
Speaker 1: think that our political system can learn from what you've
Speaker 1: learned in the Timeanese political systems? There was a police
Speaker 1: conversation of virtual town hall in Bowling Green, Kentucky a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago Bowling Green, Kentucky. Yes, and regardless
Speaker 1: of which party they identify, with everyone thinks that we
Speaker 1: should put the arts into science, technology, engineering, and maths
Speaker 1: instead of stand let's make esteem. That's something people agree on.
Speaker 1: There should be more broadband vendor choices for a better service,
Speaker 1: and so on. So look, I do believe that those
Speaker 1: ideologies help shape some of the debates. But there are
Speaker 1: like the arts teachers or the broadband connections. There are
Speaker 1: things that are just you know, infrastructure. There are things
Speaker 1: that in a cultural or scientific or educational sense, that's
Speaker 1: broadly a rough consensus. It's just that you have to
Speaker 1: ask about that specifically, and then you get those little
Speaker 1: hanging fruits. And when the mayors are the township leaders
Speaker 1: or governors adopt those idea, it also improved their chance
Speaker 1: of getting reelected. Mm hmm. Well, how do you think
Speaker 1: about the the role of technology versus the role of
Speaker 1: humans in implementing positive, useful, pro social technology to help
Speaker 1: us govern ourselves better. I believe technologies aren't here to
Speaker 1: connect people with other people, so which is why I
Speaker 1: call a assistive intelligence. They play the role of my
Speaker 1: eye class for example, which enabled me to see you better,
Speaker 1: but my eyeglass never pops out A uncle ustible advertised
Speaker 1: mephor ten seconds, right, that would not be aligned to
Speaker 1: my values. I'm sure someone is designing you know, sponsored
Speaker 1: glasses very soon, right, and I can fix it myself
Speaker 1: or take it to some repaired person uh nearby. And
Speaker 1: that means that it's accountable to also the person using it.
Speaker 1: It's not locking uh in my choice of vendors, and
Speaker 1: so I don't have to pay someone a million dollar
Speaker 1: license features to fix my eye glass. So with these
Speaker 1: important UM guarantees of assistiveness, which includes of course accountability
Speaker 1: and alignment, it means that technologies stay customizable, which is
Speaker 1: why it's not perfect, it's just good enough. And how
Speaker 1: to make good enough better lines in the edges right,
Speaker 1: and the people closest to the pain for the people
Speaker 1: using those technologies, there must be the ultimate arbit of
Speaker 1: how to modify those technologies. So without that, it's not
Speaker 1: assistive intelligence anymore, it would be authoritarian intelligence. And I
Speaker 1: think both paths are possible into some degree. Both paths
Speaker 1: will be pursued depending on which part of the world
Speaker 1: we're talking about, even in the same time zone, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: even in the same time zone. UM. We call this
Speaker 1: show how to Citizen. We we interpret it as a verb,
Speaker 1: as a way of being in society, as a way
Speaker 1: of being part of a collective and contributing to that.
Speaker 1: You are, obviously, to me, someone whose citizens hard right
Speaker 1: and then the best possible way if you could pass
Speaker 1: on some advice, how would you define citizen as a verb?
Speaker 1: What does it mean to do? How does it mean
Speaker 1: to be? Um? I'm reminded of my favorite quote from
Speaker 1: the singer songwriter Lenna Cohen from Canada, who said in
Speaker 1: the poem and a quote ring the bells that still
Speaker 1: can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack,
Speaker 1: a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in.
Speaker 1: So to citizen is to be that light Poetician Audrey
Speaker 1: Tongue with the Leonard Cohen. Okay, okay, minister, thank you,
Speaker 1: minister Audrey Tongue for your time, pleasure. Is there something
Speaker 1: else I should have asked you? No, I think this
Speaker 1: is pretty complete, so I will add to maybe liftloin
Speaker 1: prosper Yes, I want to let you win on a
Speaker 1: little context for that interview because of Taiwan being so
Speaker 1: far a that interview ended for me here in l
Speaker 1: A at ten pm. And when I tell you that
Speaker 1: I was vibrating at ten pm after that conversation. Literally
Speaker 1: I had to go take a walk afterwards. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how one person can be so inspiring and also
Speaker 1: so humble. I think what really moves me is the
Speaker 1: idea of being able to see, to really to visualize
Speaker 1: how I connect with someone in an affirmative way, whether
Speaker 1: it's a friend or a complete stranger. The dopamine from
Speaker 1: that would so far outweigh a retweet in my echo
Speaker 1: chamber that is social media. This concept of rough consensus.
Speaker 1: It's really beautiful because nothing's perfect right, nothing's one size
Speaker 1: fits all, but there are overlaps, and in those overlaps
Speaker 1: that's where we innovate, where we learn, and most of all,
Speaker 1: where we get excited to come together and use our
Speaker 1: collective power. Next week, I talked to gen Z climate
Speaker 1: activists Jamie Markolan about where tech fits into solving climate change. Hint,
Speaker 1: it's not what I expected from a gen Z ear.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a danger in putting too much
Speaker 1: faith in innovating our way out of this, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like there also has to be some respect for
Speaker 1: the natural technologies. And now that I've returned to Earth
Speaker 1: from Planet Audrey, it's time for some action. First, I
Speaker 1: want you to think about your personal power. When have
Speaker 1: you felt justified pushing against an authority in your life?
Speaker 1: How did you do it and did you achieve your goal?
Speaker 1: If not, why do you think no? And if so,
Speaker 1: were there other unintended consequences? Next, I want you to
Speaker 1: get informed about this idea of open government. It's all
Speaker 1: well and good to say that government is we the people,
Speaker 1: but what could that actually look like. One example is
Speaker 1: Audrey's work, so we learn more about it at Digital
Speaker 1: Minister dot t w and if you want to go deeper,
Speaker 1: read the book Open Democracy by Helene Landmore. It's about
Speaker 1: centering ordinary citizens in the democratic process. I actually saw
Speaker 1: Helene speak recently and she reminded me of some things
Speaker 1: that our season two guests Astra Taylor was saying about
Speaker 1: how ancient Greeks conscripted random people into civil service. Let's
Speaker 1: regain some imagination about our power. Find Helene's book in
Speaker 1: our online bookstore at bookshop dot org, slash shop slash
Speaker 1: how do citizen in search social media for the hashtag
Speaker 1: open government to find more related thinkers and doers helping
Speaker 1: us govern ourselves Finally, practice sharing your voice on an
Speaker 1: issue you care about in a public forum, not just
Speaker 1: social media though. For example, did you know you can
Speaker 1: comment on upcoming federal regulations at regulations dot GOVN I'm
Speaker 1: just logging in there, like dropping what's up all over
Speaker 1: these notice for proposed rulemaking. It's exciting, but the real
Speaker 1: action is local. So join a participatory budgeting initiative by
Speaker 1: searching online for participatory budgeting near me, or put your
Speaker 1: town or state's name there. Or try attending a virtual
Speaker 1: or live city or neighborhood council meeting and offering feedback
Speaker 1: during the public comments section. Use your voice to influence
Speaker 1: a public issue. Flex that power. We've got links to
Speaker 1: all of this and more at how to citizen dot
Speaker 1: com and follow us on Instagram at how to Citizen.
Speaker 1: Tag us in your own posts about your participation. Thanks.
Speaker 1: How the Citizen with barrettun Day is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Podcasts and dust Light Productions. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusuf.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Tamika Adams, our producer is Ali Kilts,
Speaker 1: and our assistant producer Sam Paulson, Stephanie Cohne is our editor,
Speaker 1: Valentino Rivera is our senior engineer, and Matthew Lai as
Speaker 1: our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen, with additional original
Speaker 1: music for season three from Andrew Clawson. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced and sound designed by Ali Kilts. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and Rachel Garcia at
Speaker 1: dust Light Productions.