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Conversations with Tyler

Audrey Tang on the Technology of Democracy

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Audrey Tang began reading classical works like the Shūjīng and Tao Te Ching at the age of 5 and learned the programming language Perl at the age of 12. Now, the autodidact and self-described "conservative anarchist" is a software engineer and the first non-binary digital minister of Taiwan. Their work focuses on how social and digital technologies can foster empathy, democracy, and human progress.

Audrey joined Tyler to discuss how Taiwan approached regulating Chinese tech companies, the inherent extraterritoriality of data norms, how Finnegans Wake has influenced their approach to technology, the benefits of radical transparency in communication, why they appreciate the laziness of Perl, using "humor over rumor" to combat online disinformation, why Taiwan views democracy as a set of social technologies, how their politics have been influenced by Taiwan's indigenous communities and their oral culture, what Chinese literature teaches about change, how they view Confucianism as a Daoist, how they would improve Taiwanese education, why they view mistakes in the American experiment as inevitable – but not insurmountable, the role of civic tech in Taiwan's pandemic response, the most important remnants of Japanese influence remaining in Taiwan, why they love Magic: The Gathering, the transculturalism that makes Taiwan particularly open and accepting of LGBT lifestyles, growing up with parents who were journalists, how being transgender makes them more empathetic, the ways American values still underpin the internet, what they learned from previous Occupy movements, why translation, rotation, and scaling are important skills for becoming a better thinker, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded September 24th, 2020

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:08.3

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

0:12.5

Learn more at mercatis.org.

0:15.1

And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates,

0:19.8

visit ConversationsWithT Tyler.com.

0:27.0

Hello everyone, welcome back to ConversationsWithT Tyler.

0:30.9

Tonight I'm chatting with the amazing Audrey Tang, who is also digital minister of Taiwan.

0:36.9

Audrey, welcome.

0:38.3

Hello, good luck, good time everyone.

0:40.8

What software that doesn't exist yet would be most helpful for coordinating future anti-authoritarian movements?

0:49.6

Well, of course, a quantum resistance cryptographic channel will really help that enable true secure

0:56.5

conversation that once it's someone try to intercept it, you will know immediately.

1:03.0

There are encrypted channels now, such as WhatsApp.

1:05.8

Do they not serve that function?

1:08.0

If the makers of the software decide to eavesdrop themselves, then there's no physical property,

1:15.3

only mathematical property that stops the conversation being eavesdropped.

1:19.8

Now those, what we call the public key cryptography, mathematics,

1:23.5

is it is very real danger of being broken within a decade or so,

1:28.4

or two decades if you're optimistic by the quantum computer themselves.

1:32.4

What kind of software do we need to make the democracy of the future work?

1:36.6

Well, first of all, I think democracy is an ongoing process,

1:40.7

so definitely something that makes the listening at skill work,

...

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