Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Today we have 4 persons from the editors’ team. The interview will be conducted by Mr. Murakami and the interpreter is Mijikta.

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: At the end of this interview the CEO of our company, he would like to come in and say a lot of thanks to you. Please be aware of that.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] We started 7-8 minutes late. I don’t have anything afterward. You will have one full hour and we can convene with this time frame.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Thank you very much.

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Today we are going to be interviewing you for our magazine “Learning Design” which I just held up, and it’s going to be under our series “Living My Life”.

Mijikta: We’re going to be talking about, and we’d like to ask you about turning points, inflection points, if any, when you encountered failure, then when you were down on yourself. How you were able to recover from that?

Audrey Tang: It’s a really interesting topic. For example, I got the question list from you, but it’s encrypted and somehow I didn’t get a password. I don’t have the preview of the questions you are going to ask. The way I recover is just by telling you that.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Thank you very much.

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: We would like to hear about how, what you think about things, how you deal with things and so on, not as an official but also as a person, how you go about things, those are the things that we are interested in.

Audrey Tang: OK, there will be unofficial interview then. OK.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: The password works. Excellent. I’m able to see the document.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Here I would like to change over to the interviewer. That’s Mr. Murakami. Mr. Murakami, he is a writer. We look forward to interviewing you.

Murakami: [Japanese] .

Mijikta: First of all, I now understand that you were able to open the file and see the questions. We’re going to go according to that script. Our first question is, you joined the ministry in 2016. It has been five years already. Looking back, can you tell us how you feel right now?

Audrey Tang: I feel perfectly fine. I think the original ideas of radical transparency, voluntary association. Teleworking has not only been proven to work within the cabinet, but actually after the pandemic and infodemic are becoming the new normal and way that I and my friends helped pioneer back in 2014, ‘15 is now part of the public service. I feel pretty good.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Initially, you were doing political work as a politician, and now you are engaged in various projects and programs. You have completed a lot of past goals and so on, so forth. Those things that you have been working on your past programs, goals, whatnot, have they changed since you joined the ministry?

Audrey Tang: No, not at all, because as a public servant to the public service, I work with the government with the career public servants, not for the government, not for the politicians. Volunteer association means to take no orders and give no orders.

Audrey Tang: In a sense, I’m still in this the crunch point like this midpoint between the gravity centers of government on one side and the movements on the other facilitating communication without getting captured into any particular center of gravity. No, I have not changed in my principles but I would to think that the bandwidth of communication like a relaying satellite have only grown since 2014.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Thank you.

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: While you were running all these past programs, projects, whatnot, during the pandemic, you, Mr. Tang, sorry, Audrey Tang…

Audrey Tang: That’s fine.

Mijikta: Sorry, I’m not good with genders. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: No, it’s fine. My gender pronoun is whatever. Whatever works…

Mijikta: OK. What is Taiwan working on globally at the present time?

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned the twindemics are the focus at the moment the pandemic and infodemic. Going around that and beyond that, we’re looking at the global issues that require coordination across different sectors.

Audrey Tang: Climate action that is another thing, of course, and resilience of society and the environment circular economy, that’s another one. Not just for the carbon and greenhouse gases. How to be resilient in our supply chains to counter against natural geopolitical events and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Basically, it’s all about sustainability and resilience. These are the main things we are working on.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: I understand that you are working on so many social issues. During the pandemic, because you were working on the digital startup things, were you able to give a lot of them added value to it? How did your job perform under the pandemic?

Audrey Tang: It’s just assistive role that we play. The main goal of the counter pandemic effort were set by the Central Epidemic Command Center, the CECC.

Audrey Tang: Last year it was first all about getting three quarter of people wearing masks. This year in May, it was all about getting three quarter of people leaving the check ins in the venues so that we can do contact tracing. Around now it’s getting three quarter of people vaccinated.

Audrey Tang: For first shot we’ll reach that today if not tomorrow. I think it’s today. I realized that Japan has been there for quite a while now, but we started rather later. The goals were set by the CECC in the digital register to lower the risk and to improve the efficiency and making sure that people can understand it better and also contribute better, so it’s purely a facilitative role.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: In Japan, what the companies in Japan are doing is trying to run their businesses more efficiently, and they’ve been doing digital transformation, DX from quite long time ago.

Mijikta: Now because of the pandemic, because of Corona, everybody is doing remote work, and we’re getting quite used to it, but in Taiwan, I understand that you’re trying to solve issues through digital transformation.

Mijikta: I believe a lot of people in Taiwan are also now used to working remotely and so on during the pandemic, but through working remotely, has your digital transformation work come out positively for the people of Taiwan? If so, what kind of positive impact has your digital transformation work have had on your people?

Audrey Tang: Well, we’re not forcing it on anyone though, like the SMS based contact tracing. If you don’t like scanning a QR code, you can always manually type in the location code.

Audrey Tang: If you don’t have a phone, you can always, I don’t know, use a seal [laughs] to stamp on paper and check in. It’s all about offering more pluralistic choices. It’s not about transforming away from anything, but rather transforming toward shared goals.

Audrey Tang: Because we’ve never had a lockdown in Taiwan, we’ve never had a emergency state in the past couple of years, so the freedom of movement is still there, and people still go to work if they choose to go to work. It’s just that teleworking has gained popularity as a alternative. Maybe people do some meetings in augmented reality.

Audrey Tang: Maybe they travel to enjoy the social gatherings with their colleagues, but bring some work back home and use augmented reality to help on the machine repairs. Or for classes, maybe they do some of their studying using teller education tools, but meet together to solve problems and make projects and so on.

Audrey Tang: In all cases it’s about increased flexibility. It’s not about we’re in lockdown mode, so we can’t go to work. We’ve never entered that state in Taiwan.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Thank you very much. I understand.

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Audrey, I would like to ask you about your personal story. You were in the IT industry, then you made a big change in terms of career. Can you tell me, what was the turning point of that?

Audrey Tang: We occupied a parliament for three weeks? That was the Sunflower Movement in March, 2014. My work previously was around social interaction design, computational linguistics and so on.

Audrey Tang: I discovered that, rather than just making the pro socio social media for the private sector, the public sector can use data as well. During the occupy, half a million people on the street and many more online used the tools that we designed and the professional facilitators that we assisted to form the consensus or good enough consensus, rough consensus, on the trade deal, in three weeks time.

Audrey Tang: Unlike many occupies that went nowhere, we get to 40 months on know what not one less, got it ratified by the head of parliament and occupy was a success.

Audrey Tang: I believe that’s previously my work, for example, in social text or in Apple with the Syrian team and so prepared me, for the listening and conversation and deliberation as scale design that’s actually public sector perhaps needs more than the private sector.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: So that type of social movement that you were involved in, I think you could have continued to have done that in the private sector. Why did you actually move to the public sector to work on these things?

Audrey Tang: In a sense, I was a intern to the previous minister for cyberspace and law affairs, Minister Jaclyn Tsai in 2014 for a couple of years. When I worked with the Minister, I discovered that the public servants are actually much more innovative than I previous imagined. I thought that innovation primarily happen in the social sector, in the economic sectors, but actually, the career public service are full of innovations.

Audrey Tang: Just the people in the public has no idea about because they were restricted, in their freedom of speech. Usually only the ministers get to talk to the public. Getting the career public service a direct line of communication to their counterparts in the social and private sectors become my research interests.

Audrey Tang: In a sense, I’m still continuing to do the work that I do back funded by the private sector like Apple and Social Text. It’s just now it’s funded by public money, by taxpayers’ money. The thrust of my research, how to make sure we built pro social social media, how to listen and communicate at scale, how to build fast, fair, and fun spaces, to realize democracy.

Audrey Tang: That has always been my work. I’m still doing startups. I’m part of the board of directors for seven different international, social innovation organizations, all of course, with the authorization of the head of our cabinets. I’m a slash, as we say, here in Taiwan are both in public sector, but also as social entrepreneur.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: You have stated optimizing for fun, that’s more important than having a sense of mission or passion for work. Could you explain why you think it’s important for the readers of the magazine? Why that is more important than having a sense of mission or passion at your work?

Audrey Tang: Well, to me, enjoyment brings innovation. While if you have a clearer way of doing things that you just follow from the tradition, then, of course, a sense of mission and passion help you more in that regards, but because in my line of work, it’s never about following some existing methodology.

Audrey Tang: It’s always about learning from our citizens to surface the latest social innovations, which often involves just unlearning. What used to be the best practice is no longer the best. In a sense of playing, a sense of camaraderie, a sense of rapport.

Audrey Tang: Those are the enjoyment related effects, emotions that will help us to get new ideas into our minds more smoothly. But if you are passionate about your previous mission, and someone comes along and say whatever you learn about it was wrong, you have to unlearn it and join the latest social innovation.

Audrey Tang: Then maybe if you were very passionate about that previous mission, [laughs] the passion will exclude part of your mind to those new ideas.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: When did you start working under this, the motto or the mantra of optimizing for fun? When did you exactly start doing that? What triggered your move to be more enjoyment centric?

Audrey Tang: I formally proposed that in 2005, 2006. It was in the context of a new language called Perl 6. Now it’s called Raku. Raku is for enjoyment. Rakuto is the program that runs, it’s the way of enjoyment.

Audrey Tang: The reason why I proposed optimizing for fun was because at that time, it was considered a monumental task. It’s very difficult to invent a new computer language that tries to do pretty much every other language’s job and in a way that is coherent.

Audrey Tang: If it will appeal to passion then passion runs out very easily because it’s a work that spans a couple of decades. If you appeal to a sense of mission, people’s alignments, their career change, and the mission doesn’t stick around for a couple of decades, so I thought, maybe it’s better if we just recruit more people at any given time.

Audrey Tang: Anyone that complain about our work, we just send them a invitation, even the competitors like Python, Guido van Rossum, we sent the creator of Python a invitation. When our teammates give birth to a child, we also send a child a invitation [laughs] in the hope that they grow up to become a programmer.

Audrey Tang: Basically, it is a culture that we foster, not any particular technology. I come to realize that optimizing for fun is a kind of technology like Open Space Technology, dynamic facilitation, nonviolent communication.

Audrey Tang: These are also technologies, but these are on the code of norms of communities, Code of Conduct, not the code of computers. That’s how I started to explore more on the social technology and social innovation side of things.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Next, I would like to talk about transparency and humor. You mentioned that as the key to getting people to take action, but humor can be difficult to handle sometimes because you can hurt people, depending on how you use the deliberate.

Mijikta: Is there anything you take into consideration when you decide to bring in humor? Do you have some rules or criteria about humor that you use? How can one hone a sense of humor here?

Audrey Tang: Sure. What I’m trying to achieve through humor is not making fun of other people, but rather making fun with other people and not to the exclusion of anyone. It’s not us versus them, let’s make fun of other people’s humor, which I don’t think is called humor in English anyway.

Audrey Tang: Rather something like a mutual enjoyment, what people have previously felt as wrong or settling or threatening, or there’s a tension around it, let’s find a safe way to express it’s making fun of myself, for example, so that people can share in the laughter without being excluded from the community. With, not of is one of the main things about making fun.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: This sense of humor, Audrey, how did you hone it? What helped you make your humor skills — let’s call it humor skills for now — better than what it was before?

Audrey Tang: Mostly is just working with the memes on the Internet. There’s already a wealth of co creators on the Internet making fun. The ones that go viral, we see it. It’s very Darwinian in that regard.

Audrey Tang: The memes evolve, remix with each other. By essentially donating to the Creative Commons, I’m saying you’re free to use my likeness, use my words, whatever, in making memes. I myself appear in quite a few of the memes on the Internet. I’m quite adept in using the meme format [laughs] in conveying information and so on.

Audrey Tang: There are cultures. We used to call them subculture, but now, it’s mainstream. Around such use of Internet memes and humor, I often just refer to the community when I want to learn something more.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Let’s talk about transparency, about mobilization of people. You are a proponent of open government. Some people are not liking that concept. They’re scared of it. They think that the more you promote open government, some of these officials’ rights, privileges will be taken away. For those people, do you have any advice that you can give?

Audrey Tang: Sure. I would like to ask a clarifying question. Do you mean that these people who question are afraid of this concept are themselves officials or not?

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Yes. These are people in the private sector by having a open government that is improving, increasing transparency. They believe that their positions may be negatively honed.

Audrey Tang: If they are in the private sector, that means that they see an open government, that’s to say, more transparency and more participation as potentially leveling the playing field and therefore harm their privileges, their established connections vis à vis other parts of the citizenry.

Audrey Tang: Is that the idea? I’m still clarifying the question.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: It’s a more Japan specific question. In Japan, the senior management of a company they want to control the information and they don’t want to give all the information to people below. They want to intentionally create a disparity of information.

Mijikta: If more information will be evenly distributed, like you said, level the playing field, senior management of not all companies, but certain companies might not like that open government concept.

Audrey Tang: Yes, I see that.

Mijikta: For those people — people in senior management at Japanese companies — do you have any advice to prevent them from becoming threatened or fear?

Audrey Tang: One of the main observations that I usually give is that most of the employees, their staff do not fully understand or internalize the senior management or leadership team’s visions about the values they create to society.

Audrey Tang: Therefore, just the transparency part of open governance can help to get the same vision and mission to each and every staff as well as customers and so on. It always begins with a communicative role. It enabled their words to be not misinterpreted when carried out in executional roles, and also it enabled new ideas to surface from the ranks.

Audrey Tang: Instead of saying that this is for democratization within a company, which is not possible unless you are a cooperative, the shareholders control the decision making power. I would not say that open governance in that context, unlike in Parliament or in democratic politics, it’s not about giving voters sufficient information to vote because the staff doesn’t vote anyway.

Audrey Tang: Rather, it’s because getting the vision and mission of the leadership more evenly distributed so that people, when they innovate are more likely to dedicate their innovations to the thing that align with the company’s values rather than just bringing their pet projects to some other companies and exit companies because they didn’t realize the value that they could create with the company.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: This is the last question for you Audrey. What makes you you, and to maintain that, to stick to that, what kind of things do you do to keep that?

Audrey Tang: To me, I see myself just as a vehicle for ideas that’s worth spreading. Maybe I receive an idea like, “Humor over rumor” or something. I do some rhyming or alliteration, making sure that it’s easier to spread. Then I spread it, I just relate that to you, or optimizing for fun. These are not new ideas and these are certainly not my idea, it’s just I helped in increasing its basic transmission rate, increase its virality.

Audrey Tang: That’s my function. As soon as it’s spread to some other people, I’ve done my work and I don’t claim that it’s my idea, I don’t put a copyright on it, or a patent on it. I just keep a listening skill to new ideas and new innovations and as soon as I share it I feel a sense of satisfaction or completeness knowing that idea was spreading or now given even more life than before.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Murakami: [Japanese]

Mijikta: This is the end of the interview. Thank you very much for all the interesting things that you have shared with us today.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Thank you for the excellent interpretation. I think this is one of smoothest experience I’ve had in working with a asynchronous interpreter. Thank you.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Mijikta: We enjoyed your interview as well. Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Bye. Live long and prosper. We’re going to have a conversation with the head of the company?

Mijikta: Yes. That’s what we were about to say. My apologies for interrupting you. We are ready for CEO. If you could just wait for a moment.

Audrey Tang: Sure. I’ll grab a cup of coffee, or something. I’ll be right back.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: I’m back. Hello.

Chan: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: [Japanese]

Chan: My name is Chan.

Audrey Tang: Hi.

Chan: I’m Taiwanese.

Audrey Tang: OK. [Chinese] [laughs]

Chan: But I’m sorry. I don’t speak Chinese.

Audrey Tang: [laughs] OK. It’s fine.

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: Audrey, thank you very much for your time.

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: I am Taiwanese born and grown up in Japan, but my nationality is built Taiwanese.

Audrey Tang: Excellent.

Chan: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: It’s quite close to here. [laughs]

Mijikta: [Japanese] That’s where my cousin lives.

Chan: [Japanese] This is my cousin.

Audrey Tang: Really? Wow, [laughs] OK. It’s a small world. [laughs]

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Chan: [Japanese] This is my cousin.

Audrey Tang: OK, yes.

Chan: This is my son. [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: My son attended Taiwan Normal University for four years.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. It’s all a small community. I’m currently, physically in the Xin Yi Road. So quite close to the places that you just mentioned.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: My son, on the other hand, speaks Chinese well and I returned to Taiwan every year. If there is opportunities to meet you, I would love that. My son currently is an actor.

Audrey Tang: OK cool. Yeah, definitely. We’ve just announced somewhat relaxed rules for quarantine for returning on the Lunar New Year. I also look forward to meet you should you choose to come back to Taiwan for a short vacation or something.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: If at all possible, I would like to meet you with my son, cousin and my wife.

Audrey Tang: We are now eagerly looking forward to the complete relaxation of the nationwide epidemic alert. We are currently on level two, but everyone thinks we’re going to move sometime in November back to the lower levels or even remove the alert altogether. My office hour, the physical meetings, will resume once we lower the national epidemic level. Maybe by the time that you return to Taiwan we will certainly be able to meet in my office hours should the epidemic level be announced as officially over.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Chan: [Japanese]

Mijikta: We would like to continue to build a relationship with you, if you don’t mind. If you would mind building up a relationship with our company, that would be much appreciated and we’d be tremendously grateful.

Audrey Tang: Sure. I’m always just an email away and you already are in contact with my executive secretary.

Audrey Tang: Looking forward to meet up in the future.

Mijikta: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: [Japanese]

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Chan: Appreciate it.

Audrey Tang: Appreciate it. Live long and prosper. Bye.

Chan: [laughs] Bye.

Hikari Inagaki: [Japanese]