Rik Glauert: I just started with Gay Star News a couple of months ago.

Rik Glauert: I’m based in Myanmar at the moment, but I’m moving to Taiwan in January.

Audrey Tang: Which city are you going to stay in?

Rik Glauert: Taipei. Beitou we’re living in, which everyone says it’s very far away, which is worrying.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the hot springs.

Rik Glauert: I’m in Taiwan for these two weeks covered by Dot, obviously. I’m doing a bit of talking to people about the referendums, the upcoming. I also wanted to meet as many people as possible. I really wanted to meet with you.

Rik Glauert: I was discussing with Sheau-Tyng Peng. This would probably be a profile and a Q&A if you’re happy.

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Rik Glauert: Obviously, we’re a...

Audrey Tang: You went to the whole pride?

Rik Glauert: Yeah. I did a Facebook Live. You can have a look if you want.

Audrey Tang: Awesome. How do you feel about it?

Rik Glauert: Really good, really positive. Actually, I haven’t been to that many prides. I’ve been to Hong Kong Pride. I felt good. We were with Jennifer Lu on her float.

Audrey Tang: 呂欣潔.

Rik Glauert: Miao Bo-ya was there as well.

Audrey Tang: That’s great.

Rik Glauert: I felt happy. It felt good. I’m not a big party animal. We didn’t go to any of the night...

Audrey Tang: At the post-parties, after-parties?

Rik Glauert: Yeah. Formosa pride. These naked men or anything. It’s good. I feel positive about Taiwan. My partner is Taiwanese. We’ve been together a while. I quite like Taiwanese culture and the place.

Rik Glauert: I don’t know how much you know about Gay Star News. We’re London based.

Audrey Tang: I’ve browsed what’s on the web.

Rik Glauert: Most of our readers are from the UK or the US. Please bear in mind we have to spell things out for them a bit. Obviously, we focus on LGBTI issues. I wanted to talk to you about being the first transgender minister...

Audrey Tang: In the world.

Rik Glauert: ...in the world, but I didn’t want to just focus on that because I know you’re doing important work. Obviously, we shouldn’t just talk about your gender identity, because this was so important, what you’re doing in Taiwan. Perhaps we could split the interview half and half if you’re happy with that?

Audrey Tang: No, I’m totally fine with that.

Rik Glauert: Talk about a bit what you’re doing in Taiwan and talk a bit about your...

Audrey Tang: Portfolio?

Rik Glauert: ...gender identity afterwards and your journey. You can talk as openly as you want. If you think I’m going too far, and you don’t want, it’s too personal, that’s fine.

Audrey Tang: No, there’s no limit. Ask me anything.

Rik Glauert: Is it all right if I get my laptop out and type as we talk?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. Of course. I’ll use the tablet.

Rik Glauert: I’ll record it as well. The most well-documented interview I’ve ever had. It’s always the journalist’s nightmare of you losing the recording, so it’s nice when people record it too.

Audrey Tang: We’ll send you a transcript as well. How nice keyboard. [laughs]

Rik Glauert: Yeah, but it’s getting a bit weathered now. I have to because I spill so many things on my keyboard if I don’t do this. It will get sticky.

Rik Glauert: Perhaps we can start. What do you prefer to talk about first? Your work within the government and your political or your journey first? Or do you want to talk about the transgender stuff first?

Audrey Tang: Whatever.

Rik Glauert: You’re too free.

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Rik Glauert: I think our readers will be most interested in the transgender stuff. If it’s OK, we can start with that in case we run out of time.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Rik Glauert: What is it like being the world’s first transgender minister?

Audrey Tang: It’s pretty mainstream. In Taiwan, people generally understand that I’m openly transgender or postgender, as I prefer to call it.

Audrey Tang: When I joined the cabinet, there is this HR form. There’s two boxes. One is the party affiliation. One is the gender. I filled in "None" in both of the boxes. People generally took it really openly. It brought a lot of positive discussions about whether we need an additional gender field in the national ID registry, for example. All the discussion so far has been positive.

Audrey Tang: Since you’re moving to Taiwan, I should also say we’re now working on getting people with Resident Certificates...Before, people with Resident Certificates or ARC are numbered differently from Taiwanese national IDs.

Audrey Tang: Our IDs are beginning with a letter that is the city. The second letter stands for the gender. For foreign people, it’s two alphabet characters, two letters. Because of that, movie tickets, railway tickets, and so on, often it’s not so easy for people with Residence Certificate to register.

Audrey Tang: Last week, we announced that we’re migrating everyone with ARC to the same numbering system as our national ID system. We’re reserving the numbers seven, eight, and nine for the three genders of foreign nationals.

Audrey Tang: I think that shows the goodwill of people discussing about third gender issues in a way that is concrete and makes life so much easier for people who are already foreign nationals who are registered in their country as gender neutral or queer.

Rik Glauert: I should have been better at asking you that in the beginning. I just read you referred to as transgender and used the pronoun she. You identify as, would you say, postgender or...?

Audrey Tang: My pronoun is whatever. You can call me Audrey. You can call me whatever. When I’ll use formal writing, when I do a paper or whatever, I use singular they, though singular they is still not completely mainstream here.

Audrey Tang: There’s a person, a reporter, who told me that in Hebrew -- he works for an Israeli newspaper -- not only the pronoun but actually all the verbs and nouns are gendered. He was inventive. When he covered about me, he used alternating pronouns, like he, then she, then he, and then she, because Hebrew doesn’t have the gender-neutral inflections.

Rik Glauert: Doesn’t have "they".

Audrey Tang: "She" is fine. You can’t offend me.

Rik Glauert: [laughs] Interesting. Living as a postgender person, what does that mean for you if you go right in front of the...

Audrey Tang: Personally, I went through two puberties. I understand how the two biological changes feel like. I also socially performed in ways that are a pretty wide range of gender performance.

Audrey Tang: I usually would like to know people by their values, such as, on my main part, the Sustainable Development Goals, which are 17 very important values, instead of by their genders, or by their roles, or their classes, or their types. This value-based way of knowing people is my default way. It is about intersectionality, about what people care about instead of how they’re labeled with.

Rik Glauert: How is Taiwan keeping up with this kind of idea?

Audrey Tang: It’s completely mainstream.

Rik Glauert: Do you think?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Rik Glauert: I was talking to Yu Mei-nu, the lawmaker. I was mainly talking to her about, obviously, equal marriage, and how that’s going through the Yuan, and all this kind of thing. I also asked her about transgender rights because I’ve been covering that a lot in Asia.

Rik Glauert: I didn’t think our conversation was particularly progressive in terms of the things we’re seeing in some countries -- removing gender from all ID documents or having the third gender on passports and that sort of thing.

Audrey Tang: As I said, we’re now recognizing or at least beginning to recognize foreign nationals with the third gender. We’re still wondering in our national ID whether we use...Currently, it’s one and two for male and female. We’re considering zero, which I prefer actually. Maybe it’s three. [laughs] We’re still working that out. I think it’s going to be zero.

Rik Glauert: How is day-to-day life for gender-nonconforming or gender-diverse Taiwanese?

Audrey Tang: In new places, places that’s constructed after the new construction laws, as you can see here in the Social Innovation Lab, there’s for example, restrooms. There’s a male one, a female one, a gender-neutral one, and the one with disabilities. The four are equally large.

Audrey Tang: This is a positive sign that shows not only it’s mainstream, but actually it’s not forcing anyone to do anything that they’re not comfortable with. This is maximal inclusion. Next to the restrooms, you also see handicapped people. They can use elevators to go to the second floor and so on.

Audrey Tang: All this is part of what we call universal design or universal accessibility. This is not just about gender. This is about making everybody feel inclusive in spaces. Truth to be told, of course that applies to new buildings and new construction plans, and existing buildings and existing construction plans may or may not be that easy to change.

Audrey Tang: Of course, sometimes you see disability restrooms being repurposed as gender-neutral plus disability restrooms and so on. I think this is all just a phase of time. With time, everything will be properly mainstream and inclusive, according to the new laws and regulations.

Rik Glauert: What about society’s attitudes, like families, workplaces, and people in cafes?

Audrey Tang: I think the constitutional court really made it really clear that whatever your sexual orientation is, people are entitled to the same right when it comes to marriage and family. I wouldn’t say that it’s completely 100 percent of Taiwanese people are fine with it now, [laughs] but after the constitutional reading at least we now are very clear that we’re moving toward that.

Audrey Tang: People will start to talk about more mundane issues like the actual fine-grained rights and duties. I think the general regulative idea of people enjoying the same right regardless of their gender, sex, and sexuality and sexual orientation and whatever, I think that is part of Taiwanese culture now, and at least in our K-to-12 education system there is a law guarding that. I am sure your manual has told you -- the Gender Equality Education Act.

Rik Glauert: Linking into those factors, obviously we have these referenda about...

Audrey Tang: The word marriage.

Rik Glauert: Yeah, about marriage equality or same-sex marriage, and about whether we change the civil code or whether we enact separate legislation. I’d be particularly interested with your expertise in the digital world and information.

Rik Glauert: One thing that’s been flagged by a lot of people is that this is going to be quite ugly with a lot of misinformation or disinformation, and particularly on the anti-equal marriage side there’s a lot of misinformation that may be spread online. What do you think Taiwan can do to combat this kind of debate?

Audrey Tang: I think we have a lot of international solidarity. The French Institute in Taiwan just published a Facebook post that clarifies the misinformation about the French people being torn apart after passing the Marriage Equality Act.

Audrey Tang: The French Bureau said very clearly that the last large demonstration was in 2016 and there’s already a lot of social inclusion and acceptance of this, and very importantly, the French people was not actually as portrayed by the people spreading misinformation. It’s a lot of outdated information being unnecessarily amplified, and we thank the French Institute and Bureau in Taiwan for intervening and clarifying all those issues about their country.

Audrey Tang: Because Taiwan...Although we’re the first in Asia, we’re not the first in the world. There’s many places in the world has already enacted this and have years of experience. Their support and their sharing of their expertise and their experiences, I think, in the digital world, is one of the strongest ally that we can have.

Rik Glauert: Is there anything else on a more kind of technical or Taiwan-based level? Should...

Audrey Tang: Oh, there’s a bot on the LINE system, which is a end-to-end encrypted system like WhatsApp. LINE is particularly interesting, because it’s end-to-end encrypted. There’s no search engine or any...Indeed, the company running it doesn’t know which message is running on it. There’s a lot of rumors and misinformation that’s being spread there in a dark way that people outside the circle cannot actually discover.

Audrey Tang: There is a bot called Co-Fact that is done by the g0v community. Very importantly, this idea of collaborative fact-checking or co-fact, surfaces those dark rumors in a way that you can just share to a bot called Is It True Or Not, 真的假的. When you share to that bot, that bot will do a fact-checking and get back to you, whether it is true or not.

Audrey Tang: So far, it’s like 50k users. It’s not a lot. What’s important is that it lets us -- everybody -- know what is trending, what kind of misinformation is currently being spread on those end-to-end encrypted channels, because when more than one people share to that bot, that bot marks it as trending.

Rik Glauert: Mm, then he gets his bit.

Audrey Tang: Every rumor of this has a URL as a web page dedicated to that rumor. For example, this is a classic one. Then people will crowdsource and fact-check and say, "This is actually a rumor."

Rik Glauert: People can give links to mainstream media...

Audrey Tang: People can link to this, and actually a lot of people on PTT or Facebook or so on can just use this URL to talk about this rumor, which was only in end-to-end encrypted channels. It kind of inoculates everybody, vaccinates everybody about this dark rumor currently being spread.

Rik Glauert: Who developed this, this crowdsource?

Audrey Tang: This is from a community called g0v. I don’t personally involve in this because of my work as digital minister, but I try to promote it [laughs] whenever I can, because I think this is really innovative and is applicable to other countries as well. It can be ported on WhatsApp, on Messenger, on other SM message platforms.

Rik Glauert: Especially since I’m being recorded, I don’t make generalizations. I don’t know everything about Taiwan, but I’ve heard that people of an older generation who didn’t have the LGBTI-positive education that came about in 2004 and they may be far away from Taipei, where things are a bit more progressive. They may be older people that are using LINE to communicate, and maybe religious groups.

Audrey Tang: I think everybody use LINE to communicate. It’s not just for older people. [laughs] I don’t, though.

Rik Glauert: I know everyone...I use LINE as well. What would be the scenario...Do you think that these communities, the older people, do you think they would be happy to use this if they’re talking?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. The whole idea is that they have their family channel. If they spread some rumors, their children or grandchildren can invite the bot to clarify for their family. That’s the whole idea, because for digital natives, if you see something, you can Google, you can ask the Reddit or whatever other forums.

Audrey Tang: For digital immigrants, maybe LINE is the Internet for many people, so having a LINE-native channel is very important.

Rik Glauert: Would you mind talking a bit about transgender rights?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Of course.

Rik Glauert: Or gender diverse rights?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Rik Glauert: It seems to me I haven’t been covering these issues for a long time, but I’ve been covering them recently. It seems to be quite quickly moving, and it’s quite polarizing in the US. It’s been picked up by a lot of different people.

Rik Glauert: What have you seen? Do you connect with other approach, gender diverse movements in Asia? What positive things do you see in...

Rik Glauert: ...things?

Audrey Tang: Transgender right is human right. Human right is part of STGs. Just yesterday, we hosted the Open Tech Fund Summit, the OTF Summit in Taiwan. Actually, it’s the first time that those human right conference is not just in Taiwan, but first time in Asia. Very soon we’re going to host the Oslo Freedom Forum.

Audrey Tang: Reporter Without Borders, for example, set up their HQ in Taiwan. All this is because everywhere in Asia the civil society space is shrinking, including Hong Kong, but in Taiwan it’s expanding. It’s very easy for them to see that if they base in Taiwan, they get the protection on their work on human rights. It becomes a safeguard, a stronghold, for people working on human rights.

Audrey Tang: I think transgender right is just a part of human right. I interact with these people from the human right angle. It’s not specifically because I’m transgender, but rather because I care about human right in general.

Rik Glauert: What would you say, on a larger level, the debate over marriage equality? I think I’m seeing it from a biased...not biased but from one point of view, because a lot of my friends are...

Audrey Tang: I can take all the sides. [laughs]

Rik Glauert: ...homosexual or the like. I was surprised. For me, 137,000 people in the streets on Saturday is a big deal, but apparently, on a Sunday, it’s not really...it wasn’t on all the front pages of the local newspaper. This is similar to what we just discussed, like LGBTI issues are human rights issues. What would you say about that, that there isn’t a massive interest in this?

Audrey Tang: There is, I think, a generational difference in perspective in Taiwan. Marriage used to be a social construct. People who went to a wedding ceremony was any number of people witnessing it, that completes the act of marriage. It’s only afterwards people do the registration thing.

Audrey Tang: Marriage was a social construct until I think, a decade or so ago, where it shifted to become a registration data-based construct. People go to their local city office to register for marriage. Whether they run a ceremony, it doesn’t matter. People who are older, they think marriage is a social construct, and the state has very little to do with it.

Audrey Tang: Younger people because of the changing law in a civil code, think marriage as a state construct. The social or their families are second tier when it comes to marriage. The word marriage evokes different associations in different generations.

Audrey Tang: I think that’s what people are currently focusing on. I don’t think there’s right or wrong. It’s just different civil code, resulting in different perspectives.

Rik Glauert: Is there anything else you’d like to say about LGBTI issues or your journey as a postgender person?

Audrey Tang: There’s a lot to say, but what would you like to hear?

Rik Glauert: I think I would like to know more about your personal journey. I haven’t actually spoken to that many...I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone that’s identified as postgender. If you’d be happy to talk me through how that...

Audrey Tang: How that works.

Rik Glauert: ...became the identity that you chose, or what journey you took, and whether you think that’s similar to other people or completely different, or how it relates to being Taiwanese and Asian, of course. That would also most interesting for me.

Audrey Tang: My parents doesn’t conform to gender stereotypes at all, It runs in the family, I guess. Also, basically, when I was young, I was born with a congenital heart disease, that basically limits my movement, in the sense that I cannot get angry, or upset, or too happy.

Audrey Tang: When my heartbeat increases to over and maybe 120 or something, then the oxygen circulation is insufficient. I will faint, or my face will turn blue, or whatever. I was born with the blessing that I must be calm on everything, [laughs] otherwise my body just react in a very bad way.

Audrey Tang: It, of course, affects developmental and social performance as well. I’m always more quiet and more indoors because I cannot do any outdoor sport at all. Of course, when I was 12 I took a surgery and fixed the heart problem, but I think the brain is already conditioned in a way that is more inward-looking, more reflective.

Audrey Tang: Around that time, I took a, I think, physical blood check examination stuff, I think, when I was around 20 years or so. It shows my testosterone level naturally is about the level of a 70-year-old man or so. Naturally, I don’t know whether related to the heart condition or not, I’m born with a really low testosterone level by male standards, but a little bit high by female standards. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: So in between. I think that, of course, also affected my brain development. I’m sure. That also enabled a chance of me taking another to puberty, a female puberty, when I was 24 years old. I don’t have to take that much anti-testosterone. It’s very low, to begin with.

Audrey Tang: My HRT which lasted for two and a half years, just like their puberty’s length, led me through the second puberty of development on the female side. I think that leads to more empathy. Of course, I have the first-hand experiences of many body developments, that the body asserts itself more.

Audrey Tang: The gut feeling of connecting people, like feeling upset because of a common feeling instead of aggression without a purpose, which is what testosterone brings you, and things like that. In all of this, I have first-hand experience. That makes me relate, I guess, to people in various different psychological states more.

Audrey Tang: I think that’s the personal part. The computer really doesn’t care which gender I am. I’m a computer programmer. In the online community, of course, people identify with various other maybe nonhuman, because as well it’s seen as very diverse.

Audrey Tang: I participate in a lot of online communities, that are very open to this post-gender expressions, and indeed the use of pronouns of singular they, of ze, of zir, of all those different pronouns.

Audrey Tang: I was involved when I was 12 years old, in the old MUD community, the Massive User Dungeon community. A text-based community, of course, enables people to experiment with their gender expressions in a very free way. I think all this shape the belief that gender is expression.

Audrey Tang: It’s a Judith Butler view on gender. I think that’s my native view on gender expression, as part of the person’s expression. What makes sense, is to relate to the experiences in the other people’s personal journey, and connect in a way that funds each other’s values instead of fear at times.

Rik Glauert: I have two questions The first is whether you think we are heading towards that more Judith Butler ideal deconstruction.

Audrey Tang: Pluralistic.

Rik Glauert: Yeah. The second one, I’m just going to ask together because I don’t want to forget, would be a way to start talking about your work a bit more as well. It seems that maybe that your journey of gender identity has informed your relationship, or you’re quite passionate for I read before and seen online, passionate belief in the use of technology to help...

Audrey Tang: Intersectionality.

Rik Glauert: Yes. Sexuality equality. That’s the two questions. The first is about, what do you think we are moving towards?

Audrey Tang: We are, with virtual reality actually. We can now literally step into each other’s shoes, and view the body image of each other. Without VR it’s very difficult. With VR, it’s now possible to literally inhabit a different body, and have body experiences that are very different from one’s personal experiences, in a way that gives the overview effect on the diversity.

Audrey Tang: Sometimes we call VR the empathy machine for exactly this reason. It’s not just to gender. For example, when I talked with a bunch of schoolchildren, I actually shrinked my avatar to the same height as the primary school children. They see me as they appear, and that can appear in an avatar.

Audrey Tang: Instead of seeing me as an adult, that’s literally twice their height, I shrink myself to the height, and then we played together. Again, without digital technologies, this is literally impossible to do. We’re also developing ways...for example, just a few days ago, we were talking about a national marine park, in which there’s a lot of what we call lemon sharks, that’s inhabiting that particular Island.

Audrey Tang: We were able to actually talk about the seed ecosystem from the perspective of dolphins or of sharks. Again, because they don’t vote today, they don’t have representatives. It used to be very hard for them to join the democratic processes.

Audrey Tang: Because of virtual reality and the Internet of things, we’re now able to extend it into what we call an Internet of beings, and a collaborative learning, and a shared reality, that lets us view these non-human actors in a way that we can still personally empathize, without resorting to fiction or oversimplification.

Audrey Tang: We can literally step into a endangered species shoes. That is also intersectionality. I think all this informs the idea of me being a channel that enables people to literally feel more close to each other, and also see beings in general as people. That’s the answer to your first question.

Audrey Tang: Yes. We’re moving toward a plural world. A better plurality is not just human condition. The second view is about my personal work as digital minister. When I joined a cabinet, I brought a lot of virtual reality experiences into it.

Audrey Tang: My favorite way of meditation is actually viewing the Earth from the vantage point of International Space Station. I don’t know whether you had this experience before? No?

Rik Glauert: How do you do it?

Audrey Tang: I can show you. It’s very simple. You just put on a virtual reality class, and then you view it at your International Space Station.

Rik Glauert: How often do you do it?

Audrey Tang: Like every day or so.

Audrey Tang: It’s my favorite meditation.

Rik Glauert: It’s just the live feed?

Audrey Tang: No, no. It’s a recording.

Audrey Tang: Hmm. It’s not set up yet. Because we’re going to use it later tonight, I thought that they’ve got it ready, but since they’ve not...

Audrey Tang: The idea very simply put is that you put on these goggles and it lifts you above the Earth so you can see the Earth as a whole, and this is a imperfect copy. [laughs] Basically you see something like this, and it actually reacts to the time. My wallpaper also reacts to the time, so it rotates, and you should see the solar system and things like that.

Audrey Tang: There’s a psychological phenomenon called the overview effect that says if people become astronauts, some private sector people like Mark Shuttleworth and so on, that pay to have a trip to the outer space and see the Earth and come back, more often than not they become better people.

Audrey Tang: They see the world as a living being, as fragile, and you cannot actually have that feeling when you’re down here and clouded by the clouds...

Audrey Tang: ...you don’t feel the connection of the biosphere. Once you are in the outer space and see the Earth as a tangible object, you get to see how fragile actually the entire biosphere is, and you feel a strong connection to the people as a whole. Little squabbles and so on no longer affect you that much.

Audrey Tang: Basically, people become better people, and it’s a well-studied phenomenon. I would say that my work as digital minister has enabled more and more people to have this kind of overview effect, not just on the biosphere system with the Moogles, but also on policy use and context of policy making of getting people in different positions to find common values, and again intersectionality.

Audrey Tang: The idea of we having our vulnerable experiences, but we also of course, additionally, from the experience of pain, closer to the pain, we also have the experience of power, of being in the majority, of being in a organizational perspective. Everybody has a vulnerable part and a organizational part.

Audrey Tang: Intersectionality is about using our experience closer to the pain to understand other peoples experience closer to the pain, and empower each other using our organizational powers to put words on this experience, and making these not personal vulnerability but hashtags that people can share and connect and extend.

Audrey Tang: This is a social movement view on things, but we’re working in the government is bringing people who occupied the parliament and people who do social movements inside the administration and bridge the world view to that of the civil service like we’re all Occupiers here.

Rik Glauert: Possibly we could talk a bit more about that. How easy was it for you as a anarchist or revolutionary Occupier? How easy was it for you to go to the other side or to start working with the government? What was that journey and that thought process?

Audrey Tang: The thought process simply put is that instead of thinking each ministry as a organization that organize people toward movements and the civil services in between that absorb all the tension, we use a overview effect [laughs] to reimagine the government as a space.

Audrey Tang: Instead of asking, "Who are the organizers? How can we arbitrate?" which is like last century governance model, a top-down governance model, we now switch to a collaborative governance model where we ask two questions.

Audrey Tang: Given the different positions, are there common values, and if there are common values are there innovations that deliver those values without leaving anyone behind? Just by keeping asking those two questions, and allowing everybody, every Wednesday from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM to come here to talk to me.

Audrey Tang: And every other Tuesday, I tour around Taiwan to talk to people to channel everybody’s thoughts, values, and ideas together, we enable a radically transparent experience of people knowing the why of the how policy making context, not just the how of policies being delivered.

Audrey Tang: Digital Minister in Mandarin, 數位政委 also mean a pluralistic minister. 數位 is several, many, like 數十位, 數百位, many, many ministers. It basically enables everybody to step in the shoes of a cabinet member to see how the cabinet deliberates policies and provide your timely input before the policy is rolled out. This is my experience, and so far it’s working really well.

Rik Glauert: Has there been any tension with the existing structures of power?

Audrey Tang: Not at all, not at all.

Rik Glauert: Really?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Rik Glauert: You feel that your approach has been adopted and...

Audrey Tang: Yeah. The main resistance was always from the Movement people who want a quicker implementation of the open discussion mechanisms, because that really is the common political will after the Sunflower Occupy.

Audrey Tang: All the mayors who delay on those delivery of open discussion lost their mayoral seats, and all the mayors who supported or participated in Occupy gets elected, sometimes without preparing for inauguration speech.

Audrey Tang: There is a strong common will of the people to be part of the early-stage policy-making context. The only feedback is that I’m not moving fast enough, [laughs] but there’s no resistance whatsoever about we not moving to this direction.

Rik Glauert: I didn’t know until I started thinking about you and researching you. I didn’t know too much about this. I saw the Asia Society’s speech where these slides are from, and this open government, government zero, zero government and this being about collaborative findings in common and various things. Is Taiwan one of the world leaders in this then?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it is definitely.

Rik Glauert: Could you tell us more about that?

Audrey Tang: We actually export this, because the idea of gov-zero simply put is a meme, right? Any government website you find that’s bad or hard to use, you can deliver a alternative service by just changing the same website.

Audrey Tang: By gov.tw, and change the "o" to a "0," and you get into the shadow government, so you don’t have to remember the website of the citizens’ version, because the same as governments’ version just with o changed to a 0. This idea is called forking the government, fork being taking a different path, and that we also relinquish our copyright.

Audrey Tang: When the next procurement cycle comes and the government find that this really is a good idea, and the government can just merge it in and become part of the government structure, like the inaugural g0v project, way before I joined g0v in 2013, the budget visualization is now part of join.gov.tw.

Audrey Tang: We’ve emerged everything in, and all the 1,300 different government projects, you can click into the budget, you can ask about the spending and procurement, whatever, and the civil service actually comes publicly to answer to you without you having to go through a representative. This is of course radically open, and very few other countries are doing this.

Audrey Tang: Just last week g0v Italy launched with budget at g0v.it, [laughs] so they’re now starting the process that we started in 2012. Next week actually I’m going to visit Toronto and bootstrap Toronto g0v. This meme is spreading everywhere in the world.

Rik Glauert: Obviously, and this does fit into LGBTI rights in particular, but it affects a lot of people. We’ve seen a kind of populism polarizing in the US a lot and also in Europe with far right movements. We’ve just seen the election in the Brazilian far right has a lot of anti-LGBTI comments. How would you link this approach back to promoting human rights and LGBTI rights?

Audrey Tang: Populism doesn’t have to be polarizing. Of course, the current generation of social media rewards polarizing behavior, but it doesn’t have to be this way. In Taiwan we run a lot of online...like pol.is which is AI-powered conversation.

Audrey Tang: We use it to moderate conversations using AI as a new true facilitator so that you can see your feelings among all your Facebook and Twitter friends in a way that you cannot make personal attacks to each other. The way it works is like this.

Audrey Tang: You start as a avatar, you see your friends, and you see each others’ feelings about one particular issue. You can click Agree or Disagree. As you do, you move toward places with people feeling similar to you.

Audrey Tang: What it doesn’t have is a reply button. You cannot reply to people, so you cannot make personal attacks or anything. After clicking a few Agree or Disagree, you can also share your own feelings for other people to vote on.

Audrey Tang: In this kind of discussion forum, we take as binding if you can find a feeling that resonates with everybody across the aisle, then we agree to hold that as the agenda for negotiation with other stakeholders.

Audrey Tang: The interesting thing is this has been experimented actually in the US as well. This is from Bowling Green. They ran a local discussion on the local priorities, and always we find this shape when we define...

Rik Glauert: Yeah. I saw this on a site, and I didn’t quite understand it.

Audrey Tang: Basically, everybody who participate in the Bowling Green conversation, there’s more than two dozen people proposing 400 feeling, and you would think that it’s divided on party lines or on whatever level right lines, but actually there’s only five such statements that are divisive.

Audrey Tang: People spend far more time on caring about things. For example, the K-12 education is important, and for example, the local Internet service provider should provide more services, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Across the aisle, regardless of where they are, conservative or liberal, left or right, they all vehemently agreed on these things. Through social media you don’t discover this because social media focus on the polarizing part.

Rik Glauert: On the divisive.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but actually a lot of people have a lot in common, and a city council can just move ahead with these things. People of course all agree with it. It’s just the space was not designed in a way that is convergent. It was designed as divergent, but this is digital technology and we can change this space.

Rik Glauert: Is that likely to happen anytime soon given that Facebook and WhatsApp in Google hold most of the...?

Audrey Tang: Our national e-Participation platform, the JOIN platform has 5 million active users out of 23 million people, so not too bad. We’re one-quarter there.

Rik Glauert: I think I’ve finished my questions. That’s 40 minutes actually as well.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s 40 minutes.

Rik Glauert: What do you think? Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Let me show you the International Space Station. [laughs] It’s also useful actually to have a conversation around, for example, a building or a new park or a new airport or whatever using this technology.

Audrey Tang: Otherwise people are very difficult to imagine how it would feel like to be in a new airport, in a new park and so on. Using VR technology we can project people in the hypothetical plan A, B, and C, and have a down-to-earth, literally, [laughs] discussion about those constructions and from the viewpoint from tutoring, from the viewpoint of animals and so on, and that is my active research project.

Audrey Tang: If you’re interested, it’s called Holopolis, "holo" as in hologram and "polis" as in polis. You can easily see the Earth from this vantage point, and it kind of talks to you.

Audrey Tang: If you can put it on and you can hold this button for a while so that it recalibrates, and you can put a glass with it. I can help you to strap things on that. You can hold this button for a while and it can calibrate, right?

Rik Glauert: What do I calibrate?

Audrey Tang: The Earth should be in front of you.

Audrey Tang: It’s a menu key, but once you’re back in the application, you can use this to rotate. You can point to another star and pull the trigger to go there.

Rik Glauert: Now I think I’m on the Menu screen.

Audrey Tang: You can click Again to go back.

Rik Glauert: Now I’m on the other...

Audrey Tang: What?

Rik Glauert: Now it’s on the Menu screen I think. Star Chart it says, yeah. Shall I click on Sky View?

Audrey Tang: No. Star Chart is the one. Are you in Star Chart? Pull the trigger to go back to Star Chart.

Rik Glauert: Yeah. Which one’s the Play button? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Let me get you back to Star Chart.

Rik Glauert: [laughs] I never did VR before.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you just clicked Resume.

Rik Glauert: Did you notice? I spoke louder when I had on. The people always do that.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] Yeah, that’s right, because it’s a wider space, right? Isn’t it? We’re back, and you can click the Earth, and then you can use this to rotate the Earth.

Rik Glauert: Right.

Rik Glauert: There we go. It’s night time in London.

Audrey Tang: You use the sun to rotate the Earth. You can go to Mars if you want. Just pull the trigger.

Rik Glauert: Why is Australia so red?

Rik Glauert: "You are here."

Rik Glauert: What did I do when I pulled the trigger?

Audrey Tang: You can click any planet, like Mars or so on. If you look at it, there’s a red circle surrounding it, like Mars or the Sun or whatever, and then you can pull the trigger with this finger. If you click twice in the trigger, you actually go to that planet, but you still have to find a planet to go first of course.

Rik Glauert: It’s telling me about the models.

Audrey Tang: The Moon?

Rik Glauert: The models, Malay. How I come back now? OK, I got you.

Audrey Tang: Maybe you can find the Moon, Neptune, whatever, the Sun.

Rik Glauert: This is great fun.

Audrey Tang: This is actually how exactly these planets are at the moment. It’s accurate, so you’re not looking at a fiction. [laughs] This is exactly how the planets are at the moment.

Rik Glauert: Let’s go ask Pluto how it feels about not being a planet anymore? Traveling to Pluto.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you can travel anywhere.

Rik Glauert: How long do you usually spend in this in a day?

Audrey Tang: I just need maybe 5-10 minutes to get into a completely tranquil [laughs] state of mind.

Rik Glauert: How does it compare to other forms of meditation you’ve tried?

Audrey Tang: This is like a shortcut. This really accelerates the process. Usually I only use this for 5 or 10 minutes, but otherwise with other, like Tai-Chi or meditation, it would take me half an hour or more.

Rik Glauert: Was meditation something you always had to do because of your heart condition?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s what I learned, because if I can regulate my breathing, then the heart doesn’t beat so fast.

Rik Glauert: I could stay doing this all day.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. [laughs]

Rik Glauert: It’s amazing.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s really cheap. It’s not even USD200.

Rik Glauert: And that’s just with Oculus Go, then you can get a different program?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course. You can use Cardboard or any other VR viewer, to launch "Star Chart VR".