Taiwan’s digital minister on China’s ‘digital authoritarianism’

On Facebook and Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast and break things’ attitude

“There’s no shortage of social entrepreneurs in both Silicon Valley and in Taiwan. I think the difference here is about a sense of disruption in Silicon Valley. We still have the startups that build with this mentality of taking away everything that existed before them in a certain segment. They say move fast and break things as if it’s somehow a virtue. We do believe in being swift and safe at the same time to move fast, start, help repair things, to fix things. And that’s the main difference.”

On how they deal with online hate

“I hug the trolls — it’s my hobby. … There’s a lot of people on the internet that just calls me by name and write mean things for 100 words or more. But if I can paraphrase or interpret just five words within that hundred into something that’s constructive, something that by sharing their own experience, it actually results in innovation, in policy or in the work that I do. Then I ignore promptly the 95 words, and thank them profusely for the five words and start a productive jamming session on social media for those ideas. And so it’s both pedagogical in the sense that people see that just by sharing authentic co-creating materials, they can engage with me very quickly, but also is a good hobby because I make friends. There’s a lot of trolls that become pretty good acquaintances.”

On dropping out of high school

“When I was 14, I participated in the national science fair and took the first place, got a guaranteed spot in a prestigious senior high and so on, so forth. And then I discovered as part of working on my science fair project this community of co-creating publishing people. I took some printouts of my email exchanges with people on arXiv archive, the pre-print server, to the principal, to the head of the school saying, ‘Look, I can either, you know, spent eight hours a day in your school and eight hours doing research, or I can spend 16 hours doing research because I’m really fascinated by this phenomena of swift trust — why people trust each other so easily and readily online and also break up very easily. I’m very interested in that. So, what would you say?’ And the principal read through the emails and said, ‘OK, so what? What can I do for you?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, you can free me from having to attend a school. It is compulsory education. I can’t do much without your approval.’ And after thinking for a couple of minutes, she’s like, ‘OK, tomorrow you don’t have to go to school anymore.’”

Source:Politico