When the occupy actually happened, I discovered mostly what people really want is a garden that is thousands of miles away, but people still want to care about the sunflowers, the plants in the garden because they really want to make a difference.
Anything that can make them know for sure what is happening, like episteme, knowledge, of what is happening in the occupied parliament, as well as ways for them to share their support and distribute their support is welcomed by everybody.
It is less about the occupy, but rather about the gardening the entire society is doing for the occupied movement, the occupied parliament. It’s less about the occupiers. It’s more about this space. It’s like a garden that everybody can watch through live stream.
All the research papers talk about the people who occupy.
It’s not about the people.
It’s about the space, the occupied parliament.
It’s like a garden with new seeds of new plants.
The entire society, half a million people on the street, many more online, want to help gardening this new possibility.
It’s our feeling that the more transparent we make the space for everyone, the more participatory it is the space for everyone, the more legitimate this entire movement become day by day.
The more participatory and transparent it is, the more legitimate the movement is day by day.
After three weeks, all our demand were accepted by the head of parliament. It’s one of the rare occupy that is victorious.
It’s both a reality in a sense that it is really a physical space that people really want to know every minute what is happening in it.
It is, of course, also a metaphor because every mayor candidate at the end of 2014, if they don’t support open government, they lose mayoral election. If they do, they win sometimes surprisingly.
No, I’m talking about gardening, like taking care of a space collectively.
You can call it a stewardship or something. It doesn’t change.
I guess if you want to get academic, I can talk about collective stewardship, care, and responsibility, but the gardening is easier to understand.
Stewardship and care.
The point is that everybody feel that they can make a difference. They feel that their efforts add to each other, rather than fight against each other when taking care of a space collectively. You see that online in Wikipedia. In occupy the parliament, this is the first time I feel a physical space have the same property as Wikipedia.
Mm hmm.
It’s occupied.
By the people.
It means that anyone who want to talk about the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement with Beijing, which is something the MP at the time refused to deliberate. The MPs who are elected are on strike. The people have to do their job ourselves. That’s the theory anyway.
It was an agreement.
Yeah.
Anyone can get to the Parliament and share their view. There’s 20 different NGO running 20 different corners, each one talking about one aspect of the Cross Strait Service and Trade Agreement.
That’s the gardening, yeah.
The sustainable goals, of course, is the language with which we express our work.
For me, for example, the highlight, the focus of the year for Taiwan…
…is on climate action…
…and life underwater.
13 and 14 of the 17.
The digital…
…is about making the climate and life below water, which usually do not have a voice or a vote in a democracy…
…to give them…
…an equal voice…
…so that the society can recognize, for example, the highest mountain in Taiwan, almost 4,000 meters high, is called Sylvia by the indigenous people.
…Sylvia by the indigenous people.
They believe that it is a living spirit. It talks to them. It guides their vision of the community, and they can have real conversation with the mountain.
We lost that when we shifted to representational democracy.
Because, certainly, the mountain doesn’t vote.
Through digital, we can use reliable data and a cross sectoral partnership to establish things like a natural personhood to give the mountains, rivers, and so on, seats at a table using digital avatars.
Very concretely, like in New Zealand…
Yeah. In New Zealand, the Whanganui River is a legal person.
The river can sit on a board of a company.
The river can sue for damage.
They do so by its speakers enabled by the digital data that is accountable, and everybody see what really is the health of the river and so on, so that the speakers can speak with the spirit of the river.
As a digital minister, for me what is essential…
…is that I stay a lower case minister.
Meaning that I preach about digital…
…like a minister of a church…
