Georg Diez

Can you explain the 6-Pack of Care a bit more?

So place — or community, as you call it — is central in some way, even though “central” is not the right word because this is decentralized. Is place or community the most important thing?

This would also be a different idea of democracy, wouldn't it? You have worked on techno-communitarianism . Could you explain your vision of place, community, technology, and democracy? It seems different from the representative model we have.

What is the concept of techno-communitarianism? And how did you and, most notably, Patrick Deneen team up? Some would call him a reactionary postliberal thinker, although that may not be a helpful starting point for discussing your collaboration. Could you explain the concept and the collaboration?

Where else do you find political traditions that are relevant for thinking about technology or democracy today? Postliberalism , in Deneen's formulation, may be one: it is also about community and a more concrete, circumstantial definition of life — in his case, perhaps family and other structures of society that some would call less meritocratic and less free. Where do you take your inspiration as a political thinker? And how is that connected to what I have seen described as “ conservative anarchism ,” if that is a term you find relevant to your political thinking?

Building on this Taoist foundation, is there what one might call a Chinese view of technology?

That moment when broadband and democracy arrived together was 2014?

Earlier — around 2000? It wasn't the student movement?

Perhaps we should turn to Taiwanese geopolitics and then to your experience as a Taiwanese state official. How do you view Taiwan's geopolitical position? As you say, it is caught between two colliding tectonic plates — not only metaphorically, but in reality, with China as the large tectonic force and the United States in the background. Where is Taiwan's future? How do you see it?

Yeah.

How involved are you still in these processes, and how is that related to your time as Taiwan's digital minister?

So, as a translator, are you also a messenger from the future?

One last question: where do you find your optimism and hope?

Fully noted. Thank you. That was also a very meaningful statement, because my son, who is 16, always insists on both things. With sleep, he is always saying, “Dad, you don't sleep enough.” And gray — what is it called? Grayscale. He also says that you shouldn't read on your phone before going to sleep; it is destructive. After talking to you, I believe him more. But this adds another perspective. Thank you. That was a very meaningful conversation.

I'll send you the transcript. I suppose I could do it in ten seconds, but I'll look at it first. Have a good time there with your family. And I suppose we will see each other — I don't know whether you can make it on the 17th, whether that is also too early, or whether you would rather join on the 31st. It depends.

Yeah, yeah. And do you think you can send the first essay by the end of next week? Would that work?

Good, good. Have a lovely afternoon, and thanks for your time. Talk to you soon. It was a very good conversation. Thank you.

Yes. You too. Bye-bye.

Great, OK, lovely.

OK.

Audrey Tang, thanks for taking the time for this conversation. The main topic is corona and data. What did Taiwan do right, overall?

What did Taiwan do right in the measures to fight corona in your view?

It’s interesting. It goes back to 2004 in some way, an awareness that it is about citizen participation and better flow of information. 2004, wasn’t the peak digital time. It was, in a way, pre-digital. Can you explain that to us, how that was…

It’s interesting to understand that this crisis is more than a health crisis. It’s connected to how society works. It’s a societal issue. That’s key in what you’re saying. The way the state is conceived, the way citizens feel represented, the way that their participation works, that’s key to solving a crisis like that.

I’ve been talking about the ministry of health here, and in terms of the digital ministry has a certain relevance for this issue, because data played a big role in solving this or in preventing this crisis. Could you explain a little, the digital ministry that you lead, how it works, and how it’s related to your work in combating corona.

That’s something very important to understand and how, for example, these digital anchors work, because there’s on the part of Western countries, often the question that there’s maybe protection of privacy and some data measures. Maybe it’s important that you explain that approach which is clearly a bottom-up approach in a way.

The citizen hacker, how does that work? In Germany, you have this approach that the government set up a group which also then actually did a hackathon, so that was quite advanced for understanding of these measures. How did that happen in Taiwan?

What in your mind enabled the Taiwanese society to be that open to technology or that able to adapt quickly to new technologies?

Can you hear me now?

You record on your side, because I think the recording might not have worked as well.

No, my computer actually went down.

It literally went down.

You were in the middle of explaining the Taiwanese democracy as the key in…

That’s interesting. I never made the connection between Estonia, for example, as also being a young democracy and Taiwan as being a young democracy being key to understanding how adaptable to new technologies it is.

It is a conception of the state as something that is an experiment or that is being constantly reassessed or worked on and redesigned, in a way. Is that how you see it?

How do you view either criticism of established democracies, or more established democracies, legacy democracies themselves? We struggle very much in this situation.

Was there contact, or did Western governments approach you to learn from you, from your experiences?

Is there something that you learned from the pandemic that you didn’t know before, or how you could improve your understanding of how to use data, or how to use data in such a crisis moment?

Do you feel that there is a geopolitical divide along the lines of the digital now these days?

The divide is, on the one hand, surveillance capitalism, and then monopolies in the United States, mainly, and the other one is the surveillance capitalism, or the surveillance authoritarianism, the Chinese?

What you said is changing the notion of what the state is and changing the way the state works. I wonder how applicable it is in the U.S. That’s the other side, which is such a hard ask to get there. Do you have any suggestions how to use that moment – for example, the corona moment – in a constructive way?

Yeah, to further that change. Is there something to learn from that moment for Western societies?

How do you communicate that rational self-interest, through public messaging, or how is that communicated?

That’s a public domain that you can access, or that’s a…

That is, again, it’s more or less open source, because you can play with these images.

Can you complete this sentence for me? “For me, this is personal, because…”

The corona and…

Lovely. Thank you. Great to learn from you about your approach it’s very insightful. If you have the recording, hopefully you can send it to me. Then…

Good. Thanks for taking the time, and thanks to Julia Kloiber for connecting us.

Do you know her from working with her a bit, or…