Audrey Tang: Thank you for the great question. I think a very important one, which is why open is so important to my philosophy. I’m here not only Wednesdays. Although I have to go to cabinet meeting every Thursday, I’m usually in the cabinet on Monday as well.

Audrey Tang: The other days, people can just visit me when I’m here. The only thing I ask is that we publish everything online as either transcript or a video recording. The reason is that the radical transparency makes sure that people, when they lobby me, lobby only on the basis of public interest and not their selfish interest because they know everybody else is watching.

Audrey Tang: The reason behind this philosophy is what we learned during open-source development. There’s a saying that says, “When there are enough eyes, all bugs are shallow.” That is to say, when you get people from various different positions looking at a idea together, the problems, the inconsistencies, and so on in the idea, there’s bound to be somebody discovering it.

Audrey Tang: It serves like a collective intelligence system. I don’t have to rely on my own pairs of eyes to look at all the possible problems with any proposal. Rather, people in different positions can help to suss out the problems in any proposal and build common values. People trust each other to only add to the conversation without attacking each other because it’s all public.

Shin Murakami: Great. Thank you so much. Radical transparency. Very interesting. The famous story of vTaiwan, a platform for dialog between citizens and the government. What would you say are the critical roles of IT and digital in building this platform? What role does the open-source community play there? What are some of the things that can only be possible offline?

Audrey Tang: The question about why is digital so important is that digital allows us to transcend the boundaries of space and time. For example, we are not in the space now. Through digital technology, we can still meet face to face and see each other very clearly, actually, more clearly, than we have face-to-face meetings because we have to wear a mask if we’re actually face to face

Audrey Tang: This breaks the space boundary. Also, if people are in different time zone when they cannot wake up to participate in a live streaming, they can watch their recording and do a asynchronous way of, maybe, comment and a reply to nevertheless voiced their opinions without having to stay awake regardless of their time zone.

Audrey Tang: It also makes asynchronous communication possible that breaks the time boundary. That’s why digital is important. On the other hand, all of this goes through intermediation.

Audrey Tang: If the intermediation is biased, for example, if sometimes people don’t have the bandwidth required to participate in live streaming, or they don’t have access to such devices, or if the live streaming platform only favors certain operating systems or devices and excludes other operating system or devices and so on, then it creates a imbalance in the right of participation, which is why broadband as a human right.

Audrey Tang: Also, vendor neutrality is so important when making democratic innovations. Finally, what are the things that can only be done face to face? Definitely, enjoy food and drink together. Even though we can’t enjoy the same music together now, it’s very easy. The food and drink is much harder.

Audrey Tang: When I work with Silicon Valley companies before I become a digital ministry, they will send me, for example, red wine from the Napa Valley.

Audrey Tang: We will, in a video conference, open the same bottle of wine and drink together, or they go to their Gordon Biersch, and I go to the Gordon Biersch in Taipei and so on. Nevertheless, enjoy some familiarity, but it’s not a substitute for the actual food and drink in face-to-face settings.

Shin Murakami: That’s great. These are very important, right?

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm.

Shin Murakami: Let’s talk about the technology. AI have become a huge part of our everyday life regarding data utilization. How and where to utilize such a powerful technology is key for us? Taiwanese’s government achieved a huge success, although tech and politics usually don’t mix well.

Shin Murakami: Where do you think the area for tech to shine is in the future? Plus, how should we set the agenda to tackle the issue?

Audrey Tang: I always call AI assisted intelligence. To your question of why AI works well with democracy in Taiwan, that’s because just like any assistant, you have to make sure that assistant that you hire works according to your best interest. It’s called value alignment.

Audrey Tang: Also whenever they make a decision that you’re not comfortable with, you will demand a explanation from the assistant. That’s called accountability.

Audrey Tang: If there’s value alignment and accountability that the entire society can shape the norm upon which the AI enters the society, then we can trust the AI as we trust some of our assistance. On the other hand, if they fail to provide the account or fail to align for value, then that AI will not be symbiotic. It will be parasitic with the society.

Audrey Tang: Then, of course, the society would just say no to that particular use of AI because it’s not assistive anymore. Thinking AI not as artificial but as assistive is very important.

Shin Murakami: Assistive intelligence. Great understanding. I have your article. You see the virtual reality. Let’s make it a shared reality. You said that. You always think about the community, the technology, and our season together. What do you mean?

Audrey Tang: Yes, definitely. If everybody is trapped in their own virtual reality, then there is no democracy anymore because people cannot understand each other’s feelings. On the other hand, if we use VR technologies to meet together, then that enables democracy.

Shin Murakami: Let’s move on the next question. The current Taiwanese government is actively hiring younger people. You were 35 years old when you became the Minister for Digital Affairs in 2016. I also read about Taiwan’s “Reverse Mentorships” in which cabinet ministers appoints entrepreneurs and social innovators under the age of 35 as reverse mentors. I am very surprised to that.

Shin Murakami: What are your thoughts on the importance of incorporating the power of young people into organizations, both in politics and in business?

Audrey Tang: If you are under 35 years old, that means that you are a digital native. By the time that you learn to read and write, it’s already reading and writing IE computer. I am a digital immigrant. I’m not a digital native. I learned about Internet when I was 12 years old. I’m a young immigrant, but I’m still a immigrant.

Audrey Tang: For digital natives, the solutions that is not something that is top-down. They always think about working in crowdfunding and crowdsourcing and just getting people interested in a hashtag. They very quickly trust each other. It’s called swift trust.

Audrey Tang: With just a single hashtag, people can mobilize and start doing very useful social productions without having to spend a lot of time meeting face to face. It’s a radically different way of social organization as compared to people who are digital migrants.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, the younger people see more possibilities to get the social, the environmental, and the business sectors working together, while the people who are not digital natives tend to stick in more siloed way.

Audrey Tang: For me, I think younger people need to point the directions of future where the society is evolving, and the people who are older and need to support them with the resources that they need.

Shin Murakami: You say that digital immigrant [laughs] and digital native. I’m not maybe a digital native or immigrant. I am 43 now. It’s interesting. What are the potential of millennials and Generation Z for society, and how do you manage to rally their support?

Audrey Tang: I think it’s the other way around. I support them. They don’t have to support me because they are the future. They point out that direction.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, even for people who are just 16 years old, who campaign, for example, to ban the plastic straws for bubble tea because they don’t want the plastic to pollute the sea, the ocean, even without the right to vote, they can get many people into this E-petition and start a social movement.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just in Taiwan where you see. Like European countries, the students refuse to go to school on Fridays because they care about climate change, because they will suffer more from climate change, then either of us will. They will live [laughs] to a more climate-changed future.

Audrey Tang: A more important thing is that even before they have the right to vote, we need to enable them with, for example, participatory budgeting rights, deliberation rights and policymaking, proposing sandbox regulations and laws, and engaging in presidential hackathons, starting e-petitions, and so on, which are all empowering disenfranchised people, that is to say people who couldn’t vote because they were not yet at the voting age.

Audrey Tang: The more that they are included in the decision-making process, especially when it concerns to their welfare, the more that they participate in the democracy when they become 18 or 20 years old. If they don’t have a good experience participating, then, by the time they’re 18 or 20, they wouldn’t care about politics and things anyway.

Audrey Tang: We start even when they’re six years old or five years old. There’s some kindergartner in Taiwan working with their parents onto petition and also to campaign for diversifying the parks so that it’s more inclusive with people with varying abilities, and so on. That is also a very nice social movement.

Audrey Tang: Back when I was 13 or so, I also went to the streets to campaign for education reform. All that reinforces that participation really makes a difference, and so it’s also part of education.

Shin Murakami: What do you think is important when it comes to leadership in the digital era?

Audrey Tang: I think, as I said, value alignment and accountability is not only important for AI developers but also for leaders as well. A leader needs to prove in real time that we are accountable to all the decisions that we’re making, that we’re really answering the people’s common values and not just hiding behind, for example, quarterly reports, and so on.

Audrey Tang: A very responsive accountability is important. Also, when I say “value alignment,” nowadays, even for businesses, the value is not just shareholder value but also stakeholder value, that is to say one needs to take care of the environment for the next generation or the social configuration, because, even if your shareholder earns a lot of money, if the planet gets destroyed two generations down the line, that money means nothing.

Audrey Tang: Sustainability, inclusion – all are very important value to be aligned for a leader today.

Shin Murakami: Thank you so much. Alignment is so important for everyone. Let’s move on to next topic. We’ve touched a little bit about inclusion, and they are thinking about heart. Diversity, inclusion for modern management. Would you be able to elaborate on that through your experiences?

Audrey Tang: Certainly. There’s a saying that says, and I quote, “Nothing about us without us.” I already talked about the very young people in the kindergartens. Now I’m going to talk about very old people.

Audrey Tang: My own grandmother is 87 years old, and she still works with me. We talk every week. I visited her every other week to work on policy issues. For example, Taiwan was able to stave off coronavirus largely because we get three-quarter of population wearing mask in a very short time as soon as end of February.

Audrey Tang: When we start mask rationing, in early February, we understand that mainly elderly people may not be able to queue in front of the pharmacy for such a long time, if they’re really old. So, starting in March, we started working on ways for them to pre-order the mask from the kiosk in the convenience store.

Audrey Tang: My grandma not only helped reviewing this plan but also introduced her younger friends, who are 77 years old, so younger to her but not to me, [laughs] to work as focus group to make sure that, for example, we initially designed, when you’re going to the convenience store, you would use the ATM, the automated teller machine, to post-pay for the mask and also confirm your identity.

Audrey Tang: Then the 70-year-old grandmother young told me that she isn’t comfortable, because she have to type her bank card password. She was afraid that this would transfer not only NT$52 but actually NT$50,000 [laughs] to some other account.

Audrey Tang: We eventually decoupled the authentication and the payment so she would authenticate without having to enter a password using her house insurance card and then she can pay with cash over the counter.

Audrey Tang: Initially, we designed for a mobile phone scanner, but she has a difficulty in seeing. She use a very large tablet, and so we also worked so that the scanner works with large tablets as well.

Audrey Tang: The more you include the elderly into the public service design, the more likely that those services will actually be used. What they learn about is they can also teach other younger people, like the 70-year-old can then teach 60-year-olds.

Audrey Tang: That becomes a social mobilization. By the time of April, more than 95 percent of Taiwanese people not only had access to masks but know how to use it properly. That’s when our R value went to below one.

Shin Murakami: Open conversation and taking care of each other. That’s so important. Grandma started to use something. We know that we quickly fix the issue. This is like an open-source community or engineer community. We iterate through the PCDA cycle very quickly [laughs] like that.

Audrey Tang: Yes. The point is the short iteration. It’s not how good your decision is, it’s how quickly you can pivot if it’s not.

Shin Murakami: We both have the engineering background, but we know various students have gender gap in the tech world especially for including the lack of women in the industry. What do you think can be done to make the industry more diverse, and how do you think the minority can be promoted in the tech industry?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, software engineering is very gender-balanced, and it has been that way since I was a teenager. We don’t suffer from that problem. We can say that is also because we have other engineering fields and there are gender imbalances in those engineering fields, but not in software engineering.

Audrey Tang: I think one of the reasons is that we don’t call software engineering, “engineering.” In Taiwan it’s called “program design,” and so the programmers are designers, they’re not engineers.

Audrey Tang: Designers are gender-balanced. Actually, if you’re an LGBTIQ+ person, as a designer, you’re seeing things from an even more empathetic perspective, so it’s a plus for a designer but not necessarily so for an engineer.

Audrey Tang: By calling programmers “designers” instead of “engineers,” it also works with this AI age, because, in AI, it’s not about writing code to produce data, it’s about curating data to produce code. [laughs] That makes the data collection, that is to say interfacing with people, more important than interfacing with machines.

Audrey Tang: That’s more of a design-thinking mindset. I think reshaping the field as a design field, as something that’s closer to humans, can actually increase the diversity and also inclusion of participants.

Shin Murakami: Great. Name, yeah, is so important for engineer or designer career, how do you feel. That’s very important, how to call so we have specific role. Yeah, people can biased. Yeah, engineer should be the male or female. Thanks so much.

Shin Murakami: I have your article. You had two adolescents. How has having two adolescence and being the transgender affect you? How did you manage to break free from what society expected one to be how?

Audrey Tang: I went through two puberties. This enable me to go through those puberties in a way that empathizes with more people. If you only go through one puberty, you will think half of the population shares some experience with you, but the other half of population doesn’t share the experience with you.

Audrey Tang: Having gone through puberty, I don’t have this mindset. For me, everybody share some experience with me. I don’t think half of population is different from me. It enable me to take all the sides much more readily, and it’s not just about gender.

Audrey Tang: For example, I don’t belong to any political party so I don’t think that people of certain political party are my comrades and the other ones are my enemies. I don’t think that way either. The same is for nationality, for pretty much anything.

Audrey Tang: In my mind, there is a intersectionality going on whenever people feel that they can see the world through some perspective, I’m willing to learn from that perspective. I think being transgender also help me to be trans-national, trans-cultural, and so on. That is a very good, positive effect.

Audrey Tang: As far as what society expect me to be, whatever other people portray me, that’s their creation. That’s their remix. I see it as their creative output, but I don’t identify with other people’s label of me. That’s it. It’s a very simple idea in open source development that if somebody fork your project, that become their project. You don’t identify with their fork. I treat the societal portrayal of me the same.

Shin Murakami: Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’m in Japan. Japan is the world’s fastest-aging society and infamous for lacking the diversity in leadership, especially gender. How would we create open, honest communication beyond the differences of age and gender? Are there any tips that you could suggest to overcoming these barriers?

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we have more than 40 percent of our members of Parliament as women. We didn’t get to this point overnight.

Audrey Tang: We took 12 years of gender mainstreaming, making sure that in each and every government project that are one year or longer or any draft law proposed by the government, they have to do a gender impact assessment with a gender equality committee that is guaranteed to be inclusive and diverse and also have 18 civil society organization seats and 17 ministerial seats.

Audrey Tang: When they have to vote, the civil society always wins the vote. Because of this, all the levels of the government eventually learned the importance of gender mainstreaming in their lines of work.

Audrey Tang: When the referenda came, for example, on the marriage of gay and lesbian people, it makes sure that we legalize all the same rights and duties, the bylaws, but also the family-to-family wedding, that is to say the in-laws relationship, does not change.

Audrey Tang: They managed to find this innovative solution that take care of the older generation that see marriage as more a family-to-family thing, which is not touched by same-sex marriage than the younger generation, which sees wedding more as individual-to-individual thing. They create a hyperlink act that take care of both sides of the society.

Audrey Tang: It’s important to think beyond the binary differences and focus on the common value, which is the importance of marriage.

Shin Murakami: We have the same culture in Japan as well. Marriage is a family-to-family thing. That’s instructive. Not family, though, but the individual communication. We are talking about diversity and inclusion. Now we are talking in English, but English is my second language. I mainly speak Japanese.

Audrey Tang: It’s my fourth language. [laughs]

Shin Murakami: Yeah, Chinese. I’m surprised that the Taiwanese government set the law maybe two years ago called the National Languages Development Act. Please share the background or context of that.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we now have more than 20 national languages, most of which are indigenous. Taiwan is part of the Austronesian linguistic family. In fact, most of the Austronesian cultures can trace their lineage back to Taiwan. That’s all the way throughout Polynesia, all the way to New Zealand, to the Maori people.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, on the east side of Taiwan, there’s many, many cultures that are orally transmitted, meaning that there’s no written history. People care are preserving the history. Now they’re more putting them into Latin alphabets and so on. Because they were Austronesian family of languages, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to use kanji to express it. They have to use the Latin characters.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, nowadays in these indigenous nations, if there is, for example, more than half of people in that township speaks Amis, Bunun, or Atayal, or something like that, the public service need to be provided in that local language as well to show not only respect but also a trans-cultural willingness to communicate so that they don’t have to express their ideas in kanji, which is very unnatural for their native languages.

Audrey Tang: On the west side of Taiwan, of course, there’s also the Taiwanese Holo, Taiwanese Hakka, and Taiwanese sign language, very important for people who cannot hear. All these are national languages.

Audrey Tang: We believe that the more inclusive a democracy is, the less likely that we will be polarized and get into very incommensurable culture wars. The more inclusive we are, the better the democracy become.

Shin Murakami: This is awesome. Languages depend on the making of the culture you have. Local languages who are considering about the perspective for the local students, that is keeping their culture as well. This is awesome. Thank you so much.

Shin Murakami: Let’s move on next topic. Let’s talk about your career. You have a very unique career. Tell us about your career and your life decisions. You dropped out of junior high school and you started your own business at 16 years old, served as an advisor to Apple while still in Taiwan, and retired from the business world at age of 33.

Shin Murakami: In one interview, you mentioned that your income is half of what it used to be…

Audrey Tang: Less than half. [laughs]

Shin Murakami: …since you became a cabinet minister. What have you based your career choices on? It’s clear that it’s not about money.

Audrey Tang: In the outline you sent me, you already gave me the answer. You draw a colon and a parenthesis, which is a smiley. That’s my career choice. I’m optimizing for fun. The more fun there is, the more likely that I will work on it.

Shin Murakami: All about the fun?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Fun is about the enjoyment, taking pleasure in knowing that what you work on is beneficial not only to yourself, but also to people who are looking at similar problems. Another thing is that if you can save other people time.

Audrey Tang: Larry Wall, one of my mentors, said that laziness is the main virtue of a programmer. We’re lazy, so we write programs to save ourselves time. If we share this program, then we save everybody time. That’s more fun because we get more time to spend doing other things more creative than automated work, which is what the programs are designed to do.

Audrey Tang: Fun, both personal and social, and also now global, because we now understand, in the social media, if you provide a fun picture, for example, on how to wear a mask to protect you from your own unwashed hands, this is very cute and a lot of fun. This is our communication material to link mask use and soap use together.

Audrey Tang: This fun actually travels even faster than conspiracy theories and other anger- and outrage-based messages on social media. Fun is what travels the quickest in terms of viral marketing. Our central epidemic command center always bets on fun to get their message across.

Audrey Tang: It’s not only individual and communal, but it’s also now global idea of using fun to make sure that everybody understand the science of epidemiology, for example.

Shin Murakami: I saw the social media, cat and dog, and they have some fun picture. Sometimes they are going viral. It a big, powerful being together, who are doing together. That are what you mean?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Shin Murakami: You look so happy and also gentle, smiling. I feel that you have a sense of humor and a kind of essential part for you. What is your secret to this, how to keep this positive attitude? How do you enjoy working every day? What motivates you? I appreciate that.

Audrey Tang: I don’t work during the day. I’m just having fun during the day. I don’t pass judgments or make decisions during the day. I always take these ideas and then go to sleep. I work in my sleep, and I wake up with a common value or a decision.

Audrey Tang: I usually sleep eight hours a day, but if there is a very difficult problem, I have to work overtime and sleep nine hours that day. Because I work only in my sleep, when I’m waking up, I’m always having fun.

Shin Murakami: [laughs] Sleeping is important for you.

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Shin Murakami: Eight hours or nine hours?

Audrey Tang: Eight hours is the basic. If I don’t sleep for eight hours, I make sure that I nap during the day so it adds up to eight hours.

Shin Murakami: From you were young, sleeping eight hours or nine hours.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s always like that, yes, because otherwise, I will have to work during the day, and I cannot have that much fun anymore. Eight-hour workday, to me, is eight-hour work-night, but it’s the same principle.

Shin Murakami: [laughs] I usually sleep six or seven hours. I will try. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Maybe you have less work than I have.

Shin Murakami: Thank you for your advice. Let’s talk about Japan. We are on the verge of big shift in Japan regarding work lifestyle. We need to sleep more, clearly, but the one that biggest issue is that many people lack confidence.

Shin Murakami: LinkedIn did the worldwide research, and Japan was the least confident among 22 countries. We are so used to this old norm, relying on the companies and not taking charge of our own life choices.

Shin Murakami: I agree with your opinion that everybody should feel like a minority sometime, but it’s hard to accept your own vulnerability as well, especially in the workplace. How could we get away from such negative thoughts and behavior that come from this uncertainty and chaos?

Audrey Tang: I think one of the great way is to just join communities. On LinkedIn, for example, there are many communities based on shared interests, and then you can discover more people, not necessarily your colleagues, or your vendors, or your customers. Maybe they are unrelated to you by business but you are in similar ideas. You can join such communities and look at them sharing what they learned on their posts on LinkedIn.

Audrey Tang: Of course, it doesn’t have to be LinkedIn. I know many people who use Medium, for example, for this purpose, or Twitter for this purpose, although Twitter is harder to write longer messages. In the end, it’s all about developing a camaraderie, so that people don’t feel alone in facing the uncertainty and chaos, but rather, they can see that people across the spectrum, everybody feel uncertainty and chaos on some of the topics that one cares about.

Audrey Tang: For example, if you are the only one in your community or in your department in your business to care about climate change, then you can feel very lonely, but if you join such online communities of SDGs, of mitigating against climate change, even if you work in a seemingly difficult situation, you can also learn from the social innovators to, for example, turn your production cycle to use more eco-friendly material or to redesign your work environment so that it generates less waste.

Audrey Tang: Or you can, for example, find new ways to reduce carbon emissions by refilling your water bottle instead of buying plastic bottle and so on. You can encounter many, many ideas that you can then take back to your workplace to use without feeling that you have to be alone in making those changes. Just solidarity, finding a community, the most important thing.

Shin Murakami: Thanks so much. I think you are on LinkedIn.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Shin Murakami: Thank you for using our platform.

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Shin Murakami: Has it been helpful to you? How does it influence your actual work do you think?

Audrey Tang: It’s useful in two different ways. One is that, as I mentioned, I get to share what I learned on the LinkedIn community, and also find people who are interested in similar things and so on. I think that is as good as pretty much any other social media platform, except there’s less cute cat pictures. Maybe you can work on that. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Even though it’s not as fun as other more fun-oriented social media platforms, I think the knowledge sharing and the learning part, of course, is there, and it’s as helpful to me as other learning-based social platforms such as Medium.

Audrey Tang: Then the other thing is that it also enables me to receive emails from other people. After each conference and so on, I will usually receive many email from people. It enable me to very quickly check their credentials and check whether they are the person they claim to be, and also whether we have common friends who can do a referral and things like that.

Audrey Tang: It saves me a little bit of time every time everybody send a email, because I don’t have to spend as much time to check their credentials and their bona fide. On the other hand, of course, I also receive many invitations from many other channels as well.

Audrey Tang: Email is maybe just five percent of all my incoming, but for those five percent, I don’t have to spend that much time to do due diligence checks. Thank you for providing that value.

Shin Murakami: Thank you for using LinkedIn as well. We want to say thanks for your time. Lastly, please share any thoughts or improvement.

Audrey Tang: I think nowadays as we are looking for the physical vaccine, that is to say the mask, finally being accepted as the common thing that everybody needs to do, my main message is still the message of this dog, which is very important. That is to say, wear a mask to protect yourself from your own unwashed hands.

Audrey Tang: Wearing a mask and not washing your hands is actually not very useful at all. A mask is only useful if you wash your hands. This applies regardless of the material of the mask. It could be medical mask, or from a T-shirt, or N95, or whatever. Just every time you touch your mask, remember to wash your hands with soap and alcohol, like hand sanitizers.

Audrey Tang: If everybody do that, then we already have a vaccine. It’s a physical vaccine, and the world can go into a post-Coronavirus state much sooner than biological vaccines. That’s my main message for now. I may have a different message when the biological vaccine becomes generally available.

Shin Murakami: Thanks so much. Wash your hand, and sanitize your hand, and wear your mask. That’s your message is.

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm.

Shin Murakami: Thank you so much. I really enjoy the conversation.

Audrey Tang: Me too. Thank you.

Shin Murakami: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Live long and prosper. Thank you.

Shin Murakami: Thank you.