AUDREY TANG IS RADICALLY TRANSPARENT
SUBJECT Audrey Tang
“The word ‘command’ is the antithesis of a peer-to-peer relationship. As soon as you command, that person is not your peer anymore.”
INTERVIEWER Mele-Ane Havea
LOCATION Taipei, Taiwan
ANTIDOTE TO Distrust
OCCUPATION Digital minister
PHOTOGRAPHER Sean Marc Lee
DATE August 2017
UNEXPECTED Helped build the early Internet
Audrey Tang [唐鳳] is many things: transgender, a coding genius, the youngest Member of Parliament in Taiwan and the first person to hold the portfolio of digital minister. She has a personal mission to “be a channel” and I must admit, it’s this that most intrigues me. I was curious to know what it means to her and how it is realised in her new role in government.
To begin to understand this, I took a step back to learn about Taiwan, its history and governance. Taiwan is small in size (215 times smaller than Australia) but not in influence. It is the 22nd largest economy in the world and ranks very well on measures of social progress (ie. freedom of the press, healthcare, public education and economic freedoms). Despite this, Taiwan has had a complicated history of power and control, and a fraught relationship with its neighbour China who still does not recognise its independent existence. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Taiwan changed from a one-party military dictatorship to a multi-party democracy. As Audrey notes, this shift happened at the same time the World Wide Web was born. In her mind, there is a direct relationship between the democratising power offered through the connectivity of the Internet and the evolution of democracy in her country. Growing up in Taiwan and online, she has been an active citizen in both realms. With this perspective, she is uniquely positioned to act as a bridge (or, as I realised, a “channel”) between the online world and Taiwan’s democratic processes.
As we speak, I can see how that deep philosophy informs Audrey’s reality. For her, trust and radical transparency are central to good democratic governance and distributed power. It permeates everything. It’s in the way she talks about her team. She doesn’t command anyone; she calls them “peers,” and believes that only through peer-to-peer relationships can real trust develop. In addition, her office is set up to maximise transparency—during meetings she projects the screen of her tablet onto a wall so that everyone can see what she’s writing. She also audio records all her meetings with the aim of publishing the transcripts daily. There is an openness to these practices that I wouldn’t expect to see in a government setting.
There is also a deep openness in the way Audrey relates. She’s obviously incredibly intelligent—racing through ideas and concepts—but what’s most remarkable about our exchange is that it feels ego-free. She has not attached to any of the labels that might be put on her: she’s not “transgender” or a “coder” or a “parliamentarian.” Instead, she’s present, she’s alive, and her contribution seems to flow through her as though she is a channel—uninterrupted and free. Of the many things I learn from Audrey in this conversation, her way of being was the most significant of all.
MELE-ANE HAVEA: Maybe we can start exactly where we are, which is in Taiwan, in Taipei. Can you talk to me a bit about what it is that you’re doing here?
AUDREY TANG: So we are in Taiwan. Taiwan is an island that’s been around for four million years. It’s at the intersection of two plates on Earth, and we’re raising five centimetres every year here, which is why there are so many earthquakes. Taiwan was around for a very long time before human beings, giving rise to a very diverse ecology. Also, the oldest people who live in Taiwan are now widely considered to be the origins of all the indigenous people in the Pacific Ocean.
Which, by the way, is where I’m from.
Oh, really?
