It means not just the information convenient age valid, but also the time interval, that just too long.
Of course, it always starts with universal broadband, because if you don't, you're essentially saying these are not people that you're excluding, but in Taiwan as I mentioned, we do deliver on universal broadband so that's a check.
Then the next thing is about a what we call media and data competence. This is different from media literacy, which is, of course the last century's main idea about people viewing the radio or television broadcast materials was a critical or creative thinking, right? That was media literacy.
It still posits the user, the consumer [laughs] of media of information in a powerless, comparatively powerless situation vis à vis producers and other nation. But broadband as human right doesn't mean broadband download as human rights, it's also broadband upload.
Anyone in Taiwan are free to start a video conference at any given point at no more marginal cost, literally no marginal cost, because people just pay all you can eat plans, and very inexpensive one, like 16 US dollars or something. Because of that, then it means that everyone is the producer of media, producer of narratives.
Once the both lifelong education and the basic education centers around the idea that anyone is a media producer and data producer now, we can instead of teach just co create.
For example, fact checking the three presidential candidates during their debates in real time, by the middle schoolers, or contributing to climate science by maintaining the air boxes which is PM 2.5 and other good quality sensor as part of the environmental education in primary schools and so on.
Once you had an experience in doing so just as a journalist who once was working in a newsroom, and in the fact checking, then one takes a more holistic view on things. Therefore would not be captured by this simple reduction to one bit thing, which is called polarization...
...in democratic narratives, and then, of course, true civic participation become possible, because this is about people contributing their personal experiences in the way that still maintains that listening attitudes towards new ideas, instead of just reducing thing to one bit, which is not conducive to civic participation.
The social innovation tours the office hours and interview where we publish the entire transcript. These are the bread and butter because when people understand that the next generations are also checking the transcript and recording, it tends to be that none of the people in the room will make short sighted arguments that benefits only the people in the room and at the expense of future generations, this is essential.
Also important is the idea of a Participation Officer network, or a PO network. Within each ministry 32 of them, around 100 people, are trained in the art of listening skill, facilitation of making sure that hashtags are engaged in the here and now [laughs] is much like in the previous century, how media officers react to journalists and how a Parliamentary Officer react to the MPs.
The Participation Officers need to react to, for example, some designers starting a petition saying textile systems are explosively hostile. Now, this is not something that you can actually solve it by a press release. The real solution is obviously inviting anyone who complained and co creating a tax filing experience together.
We got, last year, a 98 percent approval rate, which is unheard of in digital service. That's because a lot of people has participated in the co design. That includes participation offices in other ministries.
When we hold workshops and collaborative meetings, the facilitators at each table are public servants, but they are not reporting to the competent authority of the issue at hand. When we talk about tax filing, for example, the facilitator may be a public servant from the Ocean Affairs Council or from the National Palace Museum. Totally unrelated to tax.
That's the case. Also, because it's the multi stakeholder forum, the facilitator automatically take the citizen's side, because when they are off work, they also have to file the tax.
They wouldn't be perceived by the citizens as being in a silo...
...which is being defensive because they firmly are on the tax filer's side, not on the Ministry of Finance side. When we do talk about Ocean Affairs — there was collaborative meeting on that too — then maybe it's the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Health, which is unrelated to Ocean Affairs. Maybe they are surfers in their spare time. [laughs]
The idea is that public service is both a skill, as in public administration skills, but also as an attitude. If we are from the angle of the perspective citizens, how much more effective if we can listen a skill and get some shared values, else out of those very different positions and then this rough consensus emerges always as a part of the collaborative meeting.
While this is my personal demonstration as a demo [laughs] for the first few years as digital minister, by now each participation officer more or less just work as a team, and often, actually almost always, without my direct intervention, because they already understood how to work like that, and we do biweekly collaborative meetings across sectors.
That's right. It increases the possibility for a co creation that is basically everyone can live with. When people went through this deliberation and resulting in something we can all live with, it won't become vaccinated.
This is fresh on my mind, because I've got the chance. That's...
We become vaccinated against polarization conspiracy theories, because we already have antibodies within our minds that can actually argue from all the sides. You can take all the sides, and that neutralizes the sense of outrage that polarization depends on this other ring of the other camp.
Yes, we institutionalized further regulation and municipalities are also adopting it now.
That's right.
Yeah, definitely. I don't run it personally. The POs in each ministry also oversee the POs in each agency reporting to that ministry and all the way to the fourth or fifth level. It became like a fractal. It's more of a culture rather than any specific policy, but a regulation that enables it is already there.
Definitely, well, anything that administration deals with, within the enabling regulation for the joint platform.
For example, the presidential issues, that is to say the national defense and diplomacy, these are out of bounds, but pretty much anything domestic is fine.
Well. I take my inspirations from my previous experience in different self aware community. I would think of my mentors, Larry Wall, Lawrence Lassek, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond and so, in a sense, I guess, political theories...
...working a very different political realm, I would say. In the mutual political sense, I also learn a lot from Kojin Karatani, the Japanese anarchistic thinker whose work has been translated to English and Mandarin, because he envisions this idea of non rival non exclusive exchange mode.
It's a good, almost economic formulation of the core principles of the of the commons of the Internet and so on. I find his work to be quite inspiring and also quite pragmatically useful when I want to translate something from say, the Ethereum community into everyday political language.
That's right. The conflict of course is there, but that's because each side of a conflict have common needs and the idea of turning something of scarcity based mindset into co creation, which is almost by definition there could be more for everyone.
That is only the case. If each of us are committed to discover that, for example when we legalized marriage equality.
The idea was very simply put to legalize the person to person relationship bylaws, but not the family to family, not in laws. When two same sex people wed there's no father in law mother in law and so on.
The family to family tradition in this country of 20 national languages, each one has a different idea about kinship, some of them are matriarchies... some of them, doesn't care about gender in their indigenous leadership selection traditions. If we leave kinship alone from marriage equality then most cultures are happy.
People who care about the democratic rights of participation, equal participation by same sex married people, usually care about individual to individual basis.
When we made a hyperlink act following the two referendum, one constitutional interpretation, it's what everybody can live with, and we can prove via posing so on. Actually, most people feel that it's something new, something they did think it as a zero sum or even negative sum, if you just look at the conflict.
What the result is, is actually a positive sum. Everybody feel they have gained a little bit, or at least didn't lose, improvement and all of the that. I think that's a good example.
That's right. That's right. That doesn't leave anyone behind it. That doesn't leave our future generations worse off.
Sure, sure.
During the pandemic, as well as the infodemic, there was a popular theory that democracy is at odds with good public health response, including mental health when we talk about infodemic. Democracy bad for mental health so what's the theory? [laughs]
To solve that, we need to be less democratic. Many jurisdictions use that as an excuse to encroach on the freedom of the press, on the freedom of assembly. There's a global decline in the degree of democracy during the pandemic and infodemic. That's not the threat, that's something that's already happened.
In the aftermath, Taiwan is quite unique in solving the infodemic and pandemic, not just without declining on the democracy. We became more democratic as a result of social sector participation. If you ask random people on the street who is responsible for fighting the pandemic, they're like "We are."
It's the people who come up with noble ideas of brilliant, beautiful mask designs for people who are there all day [laughs] that's the symbol of pride.
More other things...
Social gesture...
When we had a pride parade, for example, these were absolutely trendy, and that's the pink masks, [laughs] things like that builds a renewed sense of democratic politics and solidarity, public participation that made a difference in the Taiwanese society.
Since we are the resistance where we're resisting the idea that you need to make a zero sum choice between democracy and human rights on one side, and public health encountering pandemic on the other.
Well, now you had your firsthand experience...
...in the 14 days. To be able to quarantine at the place of your own choosing provides a psychological safety. Within that safety also equally important is that you don't need to install anything.
You don't need to learn any new data collection points because if something that was not around during the pandemic gets introduced during the pandemic, naturally people will ask about its privacy and cybersecurity, the trade offs you mentioned and so on. If it's just literally SMS, location based SMS, and we have those. I don't know whether you received the earthquake SMS?
