 I think Japan is in the future, literally one hour in the future from Taiwan, and I think my mind has pinned Japan in a very futuristic place, where all the emerging technologies first get its application, not only in the industry like 4.0 but also society 5.0. I think in Taiwan we have 20 national languages. We are a transcultural republic of citizens, so for democracy we see it as a technology that anyone can change, and also because we have 20 or more different coaches, we have to work in a very transcultural fashion instead of just one model of democracy. If IT connects machines to machines, digital connects people to people. In the days of radio and television, one person or two can speak to millions of people, but there's no way to listen to millions of people through radio and television. Internet with its digital technologies enable us not only listening to millions of people, but also millions of people to listen to one another, and that deepens democracy. The reason why you have a new type of democracy is because the way people communicate to people are changing. Nowadays, if we only upload three bits of information every four years per person, that's called voting by the way, it is considered too small a bandwidth to determine the common policies. Nowadays everyone with this kind of video conference is already exchanging megabytes or even gigabytes of information literally every day, and so democracy need to also increase its bandwidth, otherwise people will feel that democracy is actually very irrelevant. The limit of the current form of democracy is because it was designed in a time when the most efficient way to get information from the people is through paper ballots, through voting, and through calls with telephones and so on, and each of these technologies of course are great, but none of them enables listening at scale. Definitely in Taiwan, we're making the distinction between media literacy, which is just about viewing and reading media, and media competence, which is everyone have the capacity to produce media and produce journalism. So while you're filming this conversation, we are also filming it in our own studio, our own YouTube channel and so on. So in a sense, we are also media producers and each of our citizens are too. In Taiwan, we also have a referendum, but our referendum are binding for two years, and we held a referendum every two years. So we have one year of election, the next year will be a referendum, the next year will be election, the next year will be referendum, and each referendum is free to reopen the discussion that was settled two years ago by the previous referendum. So that enables, for example, to have the referendum that led to the marriage equality of the same-sex people wedding as individuals, but their families do not wed. That was the consensus of the previous referendum, but two years down the line when people have already some experience in it, they are free to reopen the issue in an ongoing referendum. I don't understand the question, what is the speed that's flowing? No, I do not think so. I think, of course, it takes time for the society to come, to come on values given different positions. It's natural that the process takes time. On the other hand, it's easy to get to a place where each of you have rough consensus, which is more like consent. So for each and every emerging issue, we can divide it into the more polarized part, which takes more time, and the part where everybody have consensus, which we can, of course, turn it into regulation laws much more quickly. I think the aged people are the ones with the most wisdom, and we need to bring technology to them rather than asking them to adapt to technology. So in Taiwan, when we're rationing out a mask, for example, it's the 6,000 or more pharmacies that already have the trust from their local neighborhoods, and we design the process to be essentially the same as renewing the prescription of a chronic illness, which is what most elderly people or their friends have some familiarity with. So if you design it with an idea of participatory design, then there is no digital gap. In fact, we would empower first the people closest to the pain and then move on to the apps and so on. In ancient times, if you have an idea, you can share it with people only when you can meet them face to face. Nowadays, of course, ideas spread much faster, and ideas travel on outrage that spreads even faster than ideas based on evidence and science. So of course, it is a concern. However, outrage is not all bad. It's only bad if you turn outrage into revenge or into discrimination. If you turn outrage into a spirit of co-creation, then that leads the society forward. So the question is not to ask, how do we limit the outrage? The question is to ask, how can we invite people who are outraged to feel the joy of co-creation? Well, on the digital space, we do not have to observe physical distancing. So while it is true that the pandemic has temporarily isolated us from our friends and family through the internet, you and I are having this conversation that is actually very close and very familiar to both of us. So it's the speed of light that connects people all around the world during the pandemic that people truly feel that we are a common community working on the common goals. This is the first time that the entire world have felt like this. And in the post-corona world, it will enable us to tackle even more global scale issues such as the disinformation crisis you just mentioned or about the climate. Definitely. Previously, when we set up diplomacy, it's usually between a diplomat for a country and a diplomat for another country representing their people. But nowadays, through the internet, people can work together immediately without going through diplomatic channels first. So a lot of people in Taiwan, the GovZero movement have worked together with the Code for Japan people on the stop COVID dashboard first in the Tokyo metropolitan area but also in many other cities now in Japan. And so the contribution including the simple spell check I did, I also contributed. We made it through this open innovation platform called GitHub that enable people to people ties deepen without having to worry about whether the diplomats approve of it or not. They can approve of it afterward. I think it will bring a stronger sense of co-presence that is to say, you can feel that I'm nodding when you're asking the question. You can feel that my gestures in real time responding to you. And so with extended reality technologies, then we will not only be two dimensional but actually situated in a common room. So I use XR space, which is a 5G enabled VR headset all the time and that enable people who are very far away still feel that they are in the same virtual room and that will enable even more solidarity and communication around the globe. It's going to change in two ways. First, it will going to be more empathetic. When I have the first VR interview four years ago with people who are in the middle school and primary school, I set my avatar to be the same height as they are. So we can meet eye to eye in their familiar places without them having to look up to me. So I literally put myself in their shoes. The second thing is that this kind of space is not limited only to the rooms to rooms connection. Currently, both of us are in our studio because we need this fiber optic connection. But with 5G technology or a next interview, each of us could be in the mountains or around the seashores and so on and bring with us not only in the same room but also in the same outdoor space. Well, what I think is that it will enable more intersectionality. Meaning that people who previously feel that they are in the minority can go online and find the people who support them who have similar experiences like I personally went through two puberty that enable me to empathize with more people and also through the spirit of intersectionality, people who are majority in other places may nevertheless think of their own experience in the minority being supported and support the causes of the minorities in their advantaged or privileged parts of life. I'm already listening to your questions in a digital way, not a analog way. And you're seeing me as the digital minister, not the analog digital minister. So it's not a question of how far in the future we are living that future now. I think there's two ways I can answer this question. The first one is that of course because the digital can be replicated freely, this enables a kind of immortality because once you have published your life, parts of your life to the commons, then in a sense your life will live on. The second part of answer is that however, because in the commons it enabled other people to remix, to reinterpret and so on. In a sense, this is not your life that is immortal. It is just your life as the creative material for the future generations to use. That human civilization is truly immortalized thinking to the digital technology, not an individual's life, but a cultural life. Of course, it is connected. It's just more bandwidth. The kind of understanding that people have when they carved those bas-relief into stones or invented writing on bamboo and later on on paper, those are of course already the civilization's building materials. The main difference now, as I said, is that not only can we upload a few bytes or bits of information once in a while, but actually through this kind of digital technology we can just keep on having a digital twin in the digital world that captures far more information than previous generations of technologies could. But in a sense, if you carve those Yi Qing symbols and so on, those were already digital. Binary to be precise. In Taiwan, because we are caught between the Eurasian plate on one side and the Philippine sea plate on the other, they bump into each other all the time. We have a lot of earthquakes. Because of that, our buildings are designed to be resilient like boats that can survive the kind of earthquake that we go through. But our ideascape, too, are resilient. We're caught between, for example, authoritarian intelligence on one side and surveillance capitalism on the other and how to resist falling into either direction but can instead, like the top of Taiwan, the Yushan mountain, grows two and a half centimeters every year because of the earthquakes. That's upwind, not left-wing and not right-wing. And that's Taiwan's future. I don't think that's the case. I think nowadays, if you think people are only watching, then you are using the media literacy frame. But in Taiwan, starting last year in our K-12 curriculum, we don't use that term anymore. We say media competence. So I think it's entirely because of the framing. If you frame people as consumers of media, then you will ask the question that you just asked. But because I think people, as people with agency, have the capability to produce media, produce narratives and so on, I care more about what the stories they tell instead of what stories they watch. Do I look like I run Twitter? You asked me what do I think about Twitter's retweeting limitations. And my answer is that does it look like to you that I run Twitter? Because whatever policies they have in place and they are explaining the policies, but I do not work in Twitter. For the record, I don't know any friends at this moment that works in Twitter. So I can't explain why do they come up with those limitations to you. Which movement do you mean that people in... I don't think there is a movement. I think that's a configuration policy like Twitter, the platform. I don't think it's a popular movement if we use the term movement. But of course, maybe I understand your question is wrong. I think what the SNS must do is to show that they are pro-social and not just antisocial. Just like any community space, if they enable only antisocial behavior, then it will become a net negative to the society. However, if they can show to the society that people who step into the place are more pro-social than before they step into the place, then maybe they can show the society that they have a positive contribution to the society. I'm not only talking about corporate social responsibility. I'm talking about the mission and the market need to match instead of just chasing the market returns and ignoring the social externalities. I think social networks need to make this pro-social value part of their mission and also work with the market so that these two bottom lines work together. Yeah, just one piece of advice. In the past four years, we have been running the DigiPlus Plan, which is about digitalization, which is not just digitization. Digitization is important. It's the infrastructure. But the Digi has four letters, and digitization is just the first. It also includes, for example, the innovation pillar, the governance pillar, and the inclusion pillar. So if we think of digitalization as just digitization, then we risk leaving behind the people who ought to be included. That's the inclusion. If we think it's just a government meta, then we risk excluding the innovators that come up with better ways or at least newer ways of social organization. That's the innovation pillar. And in the governance pillar, many people think if we adopt this multi-stakeholder co-governance model, then each sector can do more without over-concentrating the power to, for example, the surveillance capitalists or to the authoritarian intelligence agencies. These would be the pitfalls of digitization leading to over-centralization. I think the most important idea is intergenerational solidarity. In our online participation platform, join the GOV.tw. The most active people are people around 15 years old and people around 65 years old. And I think that's not a coincidence. They both have more time on their hands, of course, but also both of them care more about sustainability across generations. So to build meaningful connections with the very young and the very old, that is the most important part. Democracy is a technology. So like any technology, you can introduce new innovations for example, you said voting, as if it's just about voting on people. But you can also vote on budget, that's called participatory budgeting. You can also vote on the priorities of the SDGs, as in the Taiwanese presidential hackathon. You can also vote on the sandbox applications that each city or rural area want to introduce. And that's called sandboxes and so on. So if you include democratic elements into each of your like place-making activities and so on, then people practice day-to-day democracy. If people think democracy only as something that happens every two or four years, then of course people will gradually lose interest. No, what I'm saying is that we need to make it festive and also make it a daily norm. So a daily norm is not increasing its speed. We're not saying that, hey, let's hold a general election every 24 hours, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that look into the everyday practices that you're already doing and introduce more democratic elements to it, such as quadratic voting for example, is what we used to determine which SDGs are of more synergy and priority in our annual presidential hackathon. I think if you ask for decisions, then of course people who have previously been excluded from the conversation will feel even more excluded when a decision about them is done without them. But instead of decisions, you can start by asking what are some common thoughts, some common feelings, some common personal experiences, some common evidences. And if you start like in design thinking terms with only the discovery part in order to define a common value without worrying so much about the development and the delivery of the final decision, the first diamond of the double diamond model I think is much more ripe to a feeling of solidarity for the society to discover that despite our different positions and ideologies, we actually all of us share some common values, such as inclusion and sustainability we just mentioned. Well, just trust the citizens. If the government trusts the citizens, then citizens become trustworthy. It's called the Pygmalion effect. And if the government are afraid of citizens and set up wars to distance themselves from citizens, then of course citizens become not trusting, not only of the government but also of each other. And so either side is a self-fulfilling prophecy. One side leads to deepening of democratization and the other side leads to higher wars like totalitarianism or maybe totalitarianism. Last I checked, it is not possible for me to hold this dual citizenship and serve in two cabinets. Each side requires the single citizenry. So currently legally it's not possible but I am happy to share and work closely with your upcoming digitalization agency. Of course, but how long, like how many minutes, seconds, microseconds it would you like me to read for? Just a couple of lines. Okay, sure. Okay, okay. To give no trust is to get no trust. When the work is done right, with no fuss, with no boasting, citizens will say, oh, we did it. Yeah, yep, yes. It's from Lao Zi, from Dao De Jing, the 17th chapter, the second half of the 17th chapter of Dao De Jing. It's a Daoist scripture. Arigatou gozaimasu. Thank you. Live long and prosper. Bye.