There’s, I guess, lots of fun for the Wednesday. If you want to visit Thailand, Esti also has a list.
No…
Who is that?
Oh, Eileen. OK, that’s great.
It all depends on how long are you planning to be out next time. We can plan for the next visit, yeah.
Oh, yeah?
OK, that works. When are you…like this year?
Hopefully sometime this year. Just let me know. I’ll be mostly visiting, I don’t know, four continents, seven cities, until the end of the year, so I might not be around. ST will likely be around. Actually, not when we go to Ethiopia, but we will still have somebody around. [laughs]
I very much look forward to visit Ethiopia. I’ve heard that Addis Ababa has really, really consolidated its infrastructure. It may actually have broadband Internet. A lot of our work only works in a broadband as human right environment. We’re being very honest about that.
Not physically.
Yeah, virtually. I’ve been many time to Madrid from the days of democratic cities. That was before DCOT, right?
There’s a lot of Horizon 2020 continuation project. I lost track, but I am interested in all of them. I try to attend as much I can. I think Pablo Soto and also, Iago, we’re all very good friends. I spent quite some time, even after being the digital minister, to coach people in Medialab-Prado as their mentor-in-residence.
First, traveling as a robot for a few weeks, and then I fly in, using carbon avatar, and they see me still as a continuation of personality. That was a really nice experiment, because in 360 camera, when I drive the robot around, I can wear VR goggles and turn locally.
The ambiance is right there. The situational awareness, the ambiance, I just can’t taste the food. That’s the only shortcoming. When people party, I’m embodied and can party with people. I had a conversation and got a photo with Pablo, which is also an assistive device.
There is actually something like a kinship. I think, Xuyang went in my stead the following year. Then the rest, you know.
I know. I think they are still keep council running, if not contributing.
That’s awesome. I also visit the Vitoria Estates?
They don’t seem that much…It’s a really nice place to live, but I don’t see as many Fab Labs. I really like the pace. It’s very smooth, and people are really friendly, and so on. I was there for a TED talk. They’re really happy that I went there in the flesh. I could have done a hologram.
I really like that area is what I’m saying.
Super walkable. I walked all day.
I’m aware of that.
No, it’s good. It’s almost art, without the shocking parts.
Re:public is a good team to be with. They have the right connections.
I will certainly do.
I think this is a very fruitful line of collaboration, using the term “circle economy,” where kind of successful to get the business sector to start taking this very seriously. Also, the 16-year young lady who petitioned for the plastic straw banning didn’t have to go to strike on Fridays.
They actually sat down and reach a multi-stakeholder consensus. I think Taiwan has the right culture to seek common understanding above fine consensus. If we try to strive for fine consensus, people with the most time win, whether they are offline or online.
In some countries, some jurisdictions, some cultures, there is this kind of fighting, debating culture, which is good. It may also make deliberation something that’s utopian, because it would, in a Habermas fashion, assume a rational agent.
If your culture is already about showing somebody that you are the boss, [laughs] then so much for rational discussion. In Japan – and also, Japan influenced Taiwan – I don’t know how to translate, but 和 is important.
An equilibrium, let’s translate it as that. I think the equilibrium thinking seeks a constantly-revisable rough consensus. That enables a culture where we can agree to disagree much easier. That, I think, is also a key of why the social sector grows so rapidly.
The social sector sees that it doesn’t have to work with a very westernized culture, where the rational must always be spelled out. Rather, if you have fights over food, and their fights over food, you actually get to know each other really well really quickly. That’s community-building idea.
SIOs, we have over 400 of them now. There’s no way you can visit all them in a single trip. That’s literally impossible. You can do some quantitative analysis, I guess. It’s a database, after all.
Sure.
That’s one, because edible landscape is a fashion.
Yeah, it’s fashionable to have an edible landscape, and also rooftop gardens and green walls. It is just trendy. It’s no longer trendy. It was trendy 10 years ago, but people still keep it running, I guess.
The massive change, I think, happened around the Taipei International Flower Expo. Before, it was communities that take care of those gardening stuff. Around the International Flower Expo. The city government said, “Why don’t we just connect all the rings, and make them look good.”
Then they decided to do the bike lanes. There was also a top-down plan and it worked pretty well, yeah.
It’s not the garden in your house, it’s your house in the garden.
That’s right.
There’s also something about the construction laws that you have to give a certain percent of trees.
That also helps. Many other factors. We give out awards for green buildings, as does everybody else. The larger companies see it as something that improves your brand, I guess.
Like Taipei 101, they strive not to be the highest in Taiwan but the greenest. [laughs] It’s seen as something that has social status.
It is quite fashionable.
No, not at all. Not at all. It was more when Taipei was quite ugly, in the 80s.
The metro wasn’t even running then. They say it’s the “darkest period of the traffic.”
Really pretty dark.
But then the first metro gets working, and now we have this. Also, in my childhood, people didn’t recycle at all. Now we recycle…I don’t know, even glass.
In a very high rate, I think, just the second highest, or something. It’s all a generational change of norms, which is why I always believe in norm first design.
Before the norms get there, if we enclose it by a law, then that doesn’t even work. What’s worse, people get into the habit of breaking laws, which is even worse.
I’m born in Taipei City.
-ish. I spent a year-and-a-half in Germany, yes.
