 Dear friends, a good day. I am Yoshioca Keiko, editorial staff writer of ASAHI. Welcome to ASAHI World Forum entitled Taiwan Digital and Democracy. Thank you for joining. Without further ado, let me introduce the speaker. Ms. Audrey Tan, who is the Executive Yuan and Minister without portfolio in charge of digital affairs. So we are very pleased to have you. She's participating from Taipei remotely. Tan-san, thank you very much for sharing your precious time for us today. Thank you. Thank you, really my honor to be virtually here. And I would like to express my gratitude for us to having this time to talk about global issues and hopefully with global participation. First of all, very briefly, let me introduce to you Ms. Audrey Tan. At the age of eight, she learned programming on her own. And at age 15, she became one of the co-leaders of IT company. At the age of 19, she went to Silicon Valley. She started business and she carried on advising companies. At Apple, she was involved with the project of AI Siri. In 2016, she became the youngest minister in the Executive Yuan for digital affairs in the history of Taiwan. Tan-san will join us for one hour and speaking on four themes. First point, Taiwan's response to COVID-19. Number two, digital democracy in Taiwan. Number three, relationship between AI and Mankind. And the last point is the message to the Japanese youth and children. So this is the plan. Tan-san, we'd like to begin the program. Thank you very much. Now we will go to the session. First question to Tan-san. It is about the response to a pandemic in Taiwan. Regarding COVID-19, Taiwan is regarded as one of the best examples in countering COVID-19 in the world. Taiwan is regarded as one of the most advanced examples of countering COVID-19 in many cases. What is the current situation regarding COVID-19? Today, at a day of the recording, which is October 18, 2021, we have the entire country have zero local cases, zero imported cases, and zero deaths today. So you are like an honor student. Do you have any challenges as of now regarding the pandemic? Our main challenge was the vaccination rate. When I was vaccinated in April, I had to convince not very successfully my friends and families and my colleague to get a job because at that time we've been like ten months with no local cases. So people did not feel any urgency at all. So I was kind of weird in getting a self-funded job at that time, AstraZeneca. Of course, by May, we encountered our real first wave, but because people suddenly rushed to want to get a vaccine, there wasn't sufficient supply because at a time in COVAX and other international arrangements, Taiwan was ranked very low in priority when it comes to vaccine urgency, which is why I almost will have no way to get my second job because of the interest in getting vaccinated if not for the Japanese generous dedication, donation of waves after waves of AstraZeneca shots to Taiwan. So let me begin my talk by offering my sincere gratitude to the Japanese people and the Japanese government. Japanese vaccine was put to good use. That is a very happy news for us. Regarding Taiwan, you started with mask mapping and then the vaccination, the booking system. You said that it was very hard, but contact the tracing system. You introduced advanced systems utilizing digital technology in your country. So that was the counter COVID-19 systems you introduced, IT and the digital as the minister in charge of digital affairs, Ms. Dan, you've made a great contribution. We want to learn from you. As of now, regarding the future countermeasures, how are you going to plan a digital technology in COVID-19 programs? Do you have any ideas that you have in pipeline regarding a digital technology for the pandemic? The system you are showing now, the 192 to SMS system is a app-free design where anyone can just use the built-in camera of their phone even without unlocking the phone. Just point the built-in camera to the QR code. It automatically pops up the SMS to this well-trusted number 192-2, our central epidemic command centers number. And by pressing send, it takes maybe just two seconds to finish a check-in. And it's stored not in the government, but rather in the telecommunication carrier. So whichever carrier you use, that carrier will store this check-in for 28 days. And after 28 days, well, it's gone. So unless there's a real pace where the contact tracers need to piece together from five telecoms and also from the registration database of the QR code generation, it's only then this messages will be put together that shorten the contact tracing from 24 hours to less than 24 minutes. And out of the a quarter billion SMS sent this way since May, only around a million have been used. And of those million, anyone can use the website SMS.192-2 to look up which of their messages got looked at by which contact tracers in which municipality. So it's like reverse audit that preserves anonymity and privacy. Our upcoming work is to make sure that this design far from a one-shot thing can be written into the counter-pandemic acts to work on legalizing, institutionalizing these responses much as how we institutionalize our SARS responses after the 2003 SARS incident. So institutionalization and making sure it's not used outside of the scope of contact tracing like never for wiretapping or crime investigation or things like that is our ongoing challenge. And I'm happy to report we're doing quite well on this regard. Privacy and anonymity would be secured. And at the same time, you want to have waterproof countermeasures. The idea comes one after another. Who thinks about it? Who thinks about it? Tansan, are you thinking of it alone or who is thinking of these ideas? It is a group of people called Gov Zero or G-Zero-V. You see in Taiwan, the digital services from the government is something that Gov.tw. But if people do not like these services instead of protesting, they can fork the government, meaning taking the Gov website, deploying an alternate vision of it and calling it something that G-Zero-V.tw. So by changing a O to a zero in your browser, you get into the shadow governments that's faster, more fair, and more fun. And it's always free of copyright restrictions. So when the Gov Zero people think about a better way to display mask availability in a map or if they think of a better contact tracing method using SMS, or if they think of a better way to get vaccinated by looking at available vaccination places when we then adopt it in the central government, we will face no copyright restrictions and neither party need to pay the other. So you share in the information and you proceed together, you advance together. I think that's the philosophy. Now we have some questions from the audience, from the viewers. I'd like to introduce you some of the questions. The first question. You said that information is shared, idea is shared, and in terms of politics, implementation is actually made. That is what we feel from Tansan. The first question. Tansan, you have made an enormous contribution in controlling the pandemic in Taiwan, but you had nothing to do with the politics. What was the factor for your success in the whole affairs? What was the reason for your success, although you had nothing to do with politics before? I think to give no trust is to get no trust. That is to say, instead of like a traditional politician saying, trust me, I know the best. I do the reverse. I say, I know almost nothing and the citizens knows best. I trust the citizens with whatever data that I see. The citizens always also see. And then when the citizens think of a better idea, I trust them to develop their idea in a pro-social way, in a way that is beneficial to the entire society, which is why I'm less a politician, but more like a poetician, like I write poems, prayers to inspire people to think out of the box, to be more creative. And at the end of the day, the people themselves understand the why of policymaking, the how of science and technology, not just the what, the output of the policies. But there is no fatigue in counter-pandemic because the counter-pandemic fatigue is usually a result of a lockdown measure because it's the citizens developing their own countermeasures. There's no fatigue. You said that you are like a poet and then citizens read your poetry and that there are so many tons, I think, in the society. I'd like to go to the second question. To this situation, Japanese pandemic measures are a big failure, debacle. The reason is that there was not good communication amongst the politicians, experts and bureaucrats. They move on their own interests. There was no coherence and unity, so this person says. So in order to prevent the recurrence of the situation, what can we do? Well, objectively speaking, Japan is doing pretty well on global standards. And I believe that's also because the citizens themselves understand the science behind proper mask use, proper ventilation, things like that, washing your hands with soap. And so always focus on the pedagogy, the educational part. If you feel that your government is not conveying the science in an easy to understand way, we'll do what the Taiwanese YouTubers do, hire professional comedians, make beautiful memes, funny memes, use cute mascots like cute dogs and cats, making sure that people understand the humor over rumors. Understood. So bureaucrats, I understand that you have a very nice meme as well, which attracts a lot of attention in Japan too. Now, the next question, next topic, that is digital technology, digital democracy. How are you going to use digital technology for democracy? So let's talk about digital democracy in Taiwan. In Japan, maybe this is not widely known, but in Taiwan, we Taiwan enjoying digital participation platforms are used to capture citizens' opinions and to formulate policies. So that attempt has been underway in Taiwan, I understand. So how are you going to bring the online generations onto policymaking arena and lawmaking arena? That is a big challenge for Japan as well. As you mentioned briefly earlier, up to now, you made a lot of experiments and attempts. So I would like to know the achievements so far. And also, what is your current project? What are you trying to implement now? Thank you. Thank you. Well, my first attempt in the V-Taiwan project was to make sure that people who propose the best ideas in a crowdsourced idea box is guaranteed to set agenda for face-to-face meetings with ministers and also other stakeholders. We tackled the UberX issue. We tackled crowdfunding, teleworking, and so on using these crowdsourced idea boxes. I'm really happy to see that the Japanese Digital Ministry are also setting up idea boxes and the people who make the best suggestions also get the ministerial visits. And I hope this multi-stakeholder forum that we've been prototyping can also learn from the Japanese experience now that your Digital Ministry is also focusing on this. When I become the Digital Minister two years after the sunflower movement and the beginning of V-Taiwan, we add to that by empowering the young people, people younger than 18 years old, to make sure not only can they participate in the petitions, but they also have full participation rights within their high schools or within their universities or to propose agendas that other adults missed. For example, they discovered that sufficient sleep is very important for learning efficacy. So they propose that we begin the school hours later and we had a really rich conversation or they propose that during the pandemic years people would like to develop psychological counseling over the internet. Again, this is a hot topic and the young people as digital natives lead the entire society in discussing it. So much so that every couple of years we choose about 25, 30 young people as the cabinet's reverse mentors. They mentor our ministers in the way of the digital and sustainability. So young people become mentors. So they are digital natives. So, and how are we going to maintain digital sustainability together with young people? That was quite impressive. On the other hand, in Japan, there are people who do not have access to digital technology like the elderly because Japan is quite advanced in terms of aging society. My mother too, she doesn't know how to use smartphones perfectly. So for those people, extreme opposite of digital natives, for those elderly and other people who have difficulty in accessing digital technology, how are you trying to pick up these people's voices in Taiwan? We have this idea of the young and senior collaboration. So we pair the senior people with the young people because both age groups have more time on their hands and also are more careful of designing long-term solutions instead of the working age people who sometime focus on this quarter or the next quarter. So both sides of the age demographics share the same long horizon sort of thinking. And so in addition to the companion workshops and so on, sometime we simply just bring to the senior people our latest innovations. For example, the contact tracing system is explicitly chosen to be SMS, not email or smartphone because many elderly people understood how to send a SMS. They look at the QR code even without understanding it. Still, there is a location code like a telephone number, 15 digits printed in the same poster. So they just text to 192 to that string of number and that's still finished the contact tracing. And once they learn about it, well, they can teach other people too. And many elderly people in Taiwan they use a smartphone like a feature phone and use only one app really line which is of course as a Japanese origin. So we also work with the company line to make sure in addition to use the QR code scanner to add a contact as your friend you can also use the same QR code scanner to send to scan the SMS and send it. So again, we thank Japanese support in making sure that our SMS based solution is very friendly to the senior people. And I will also add that at no time that we mandate you have to use SMS at any given time you can still use a ink seal with your name printed and stamped on the paper or write your contact on a paper that's always accepted but many senior people after they learn how a feature phone or the smartphone can use the checking system. They're very eager to use that also and teach other people. Wow. So the government can connect people cannot government can serve as a broker or go between among people I understand according to your conversation. Now, we talked about digital digitally disadvantaged people and how you consider those people in politics I think in the economic and the political scenes how are we going to take care of the vulnerable the disadvantaged people that is a big issue for the world as well. And last year American economist Glenn Weil who spoke in this world forum last year you are involved in radical exchange movement with him I understand the system the can be used for data economy and democracy as well and you are now trying to teach that to younger generation also you are interested in Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani's views and both of these people try to explore an alternative to the current model of capitalism be it Glenn Weil or Karatani and how can you use a blend digital technology for such an endeavor for such a purpose? I learned a lot from Karatani's philosophy of the exchange mode X which means simply to share without knowing who is that you are going to share with so sharing with strangers and asking for nothing in return if they reciprocate that's great but if they don't you still share and this is really quite radical and this is only possible because it applies to certain kinds of goods called a public good in the commerce where if you share more the valuable part of the good grows as you share it for example the more people speak a language well the richer the culture of that language gets the more that people contribute to contact tracing the more people the contact tracers can save so by contributing to a commerce you lose nothing but if on the other hand contributing data to the commerce makes you receive a lot of advertiser calls or that your privacy is compromised and people who do not usually learn about your whereabouts suddenly discover your whereabouts well even though you still contribute to public good it's at your own expense it's sacrificing things that you hold dear and in many designs of the economy it is the people who are well off who can pay for service that doesn't compromise privacy but people who are not economically well off or they are vulnerable like as being less digitally competent are sometimes just scammed or spawned into things that compromise their security and privacy which is why the idea of exchange mode X is so important because it means that when we design new public services we make it easy for people to contribute without sacrificing anything and only then can we truly build something that we share openly understood wow so regarding that point we have a question from a viewer actually I want to ask you the question so sharing and also how we are going to build consensus on that matter and I think we have a contentious issues surrounding us for example energy climate change global warming issue how are we building a consensus declining birth rate and refugees all these issues are contentious issues in our society however the citizens and the public what would be the effective means to build consensus can we use digital technology, digital system to build consensus in such a contentious issues how could we use them in that case how do these digital platforms fit in the existing system like representative democracy do you see any possibility of confrontation or conflicts between digital system and existing systems in our design starting from VTEL 1 to the join platform today we say that we're not representing anyone we're representing people themselves their individual ideas, opinions, feelings that is to say when anyone posts on polis on join other VTEL 1 like platforms they're not asking anyone else to as a delegate as a proxy rather what we are doing is making sure that there is a pro-social space where their feelings can resonate with one another without getting distracted into flame wars into hate speech into vengefulness into divisiveness and once this system is built in such a way that many different positions can converge into good enough consensus automatically then after three weeks or so we go back and check hey, here are the good enough consensus on the say UberX issue everybody agree insurance is important not undercutting existing meters is important taking care of local temple and church is important and so on and once these stakeholders see a reflection of the actual picture of democracy that most people agree with most of their neighbors and most of the things most of the time they changes how people think about democracy because previously democracy was conceived as a zero-sum game between political parties or candidates but this is entirely artificial it's shaped this way because we could only express a few bits of information every four years it's called voting but using digital democracy tools each and every one of us can express a far wider range of preferences and ideas literally every day and even people who don't have right to vote like the younger than 18 people I refer to well, they are now responsible for over a quarter of citizens' initiatives on the joint platform so you can have compatibility with the existing system right now, Japan is in the election mode once every four years we have the general election the last time the voter turnout was like 50-some percentage very low so we have a question from the audience what is the definition of democracy? in the case of Japan, voter turnout is very low and we can't say that the policy is decided by people's opinions that's not factual feeling people have a jettison people have abandoned the right to vote is it a part of democracy? that's a question so reading from your opinion, Tan-san democracy does not happen once every four years it happens every day, is it right? that is correct demos for the crowd kratos, the power so the power of the crowd the power of the people is a direct function of how much of the policies that affects each and every one of us can be shaped by those digital or face-to-face democratic places and I emphasize places because around the world there's many place-based experiments like participatory budgeting that are very successful and local scale town halls conversations on both the internet and face-to-face on the common issues affecting the community so this small community-oriented democracy is not some future science fiction it's something that the community builders already know very much and in Japan it powers many successful regional revitalization efforts by allowing democratic participation across generations on the economic prospect of a rural place, a town for example and so by making sure that people understand this is also democracy that democracy is seen not just as voting but as anything that can express the public preferences as social objects for people to discuss then it becomes very natural then to imagine democracy as a set of technologies that each and every one of us can use and the local budget the local regional revitalization plan and so on become like today's weather it becomes something that people can talk about all the time with digital technology you create places and digital technology helps the creation of places on the other hand we'd like to go to the next theme digital technology and AI so AI is something what is going to be the relationship with mankind that is a question that we'd like to ask you digital technology will create a place and on the other hand it can monitor it can issue instructions and orders some people have worries about that surveillance society with the AI now AI is not artificial intelligence you say assistive intelligence you are saying it's an intelligence assisting humans that's what you are saying so what is the difference where from where this difference comes well assistive intelligence is empower people and connects people as we are having this conversation we both have human assistance the interpreters professional interpreters helping us to communicate across very different languages but the assistants themselves the interpreter themselves are benefiting from assistive intelligence that empower this video conference we are benefiting from the noise cancellation I'm not wearing a earphone so the sound that you make in the speaker is automatically canceled when I send my sound over so we understand what each other is saying despite a loud speaker between us that's not possible without machine learning and assistive intelligence but this is not replacing any human there was no human beings job as a noise canceler it's simply unimaginable so by adding to the assistive chain of people and machines that help us to connect we ensure that the interpreters are empowered not replaced now I see but in China I heard that because of the face recognition and behavioral record and scoring system is being employed and the high level of surveillance society is in the making in China this uses digital technology now Tansan the AI used in this way is it going to authoritarian intelligence I think you are saying that the AI standing for authoritarian intelligence if technology is used in this way this is the quite opposite of assistive intelligence I suppose but the Chinese people are not necessarily opposed to this authoritarian intelligence it's not that the Chinese people are detesting such the happy surveillance society maybe Chinese people are accepting this society in this context authoritarian intelligence is it possible to prevent the expansion of AI in this way if it is possible what will be the means of preventing in order to bring the AI to assistive intelligence what can we do? well certainly what you are saying is that there are existing authoritarian regimes and within those regimes authoritarianism is the norm so building technologies to further this authoritarian norm feels almost natural especially for people who enjoy the authority in the authoritarianism setting this is of course true but this is not a new topic this has always been the same thing ever since democracy was practiced anywhere on earth people who develop on democracy develop this because we understand that only when there is a free range of various different ideas expressions, fashions, even cultures can we respond quickly to new and emergent phenomena in a way that is agile and in a society where the authoritarian regime knows best when they encounter something that is beyond their comprehension well there is no free journalism sector there is no whistleblowers there is no independently critical people who can't help figure out hey there is something new that is going on so I believe instead of positioning democracy as anti-authoritarianism we must just keep advancing democracy and then as new emergent phenomenon comes people who are kind of wondering whether their polity should go more authoritarian or more democratic will come to feel if they embrace the democracy especially digital democracy well then they don't have to make the compromise between privacy and freedom on one side and I don't know public health on the other in that context Tansan now about A.I. should be connected to digital democracy what should be the ways of using A.I. they are good what kind of image of a democratic society do you have of where the appropriate application is made by A.I. as I mentioned A.I. assistive intelligence connects and empowers people it's as simple as that whereas authoritarian intelligence concentrates power from people and it doesn't empower anyone rather it disempower everyone and aggregates the power into a engineering elite I guess in a authoritarian chambers of command and so I would say that even with the current digital democracy development it's not a solution to everything obviously but we are already seeing that with the open source open innovation communities even the places that were previously more authoritarian well I should know because when I was a child Taiwan was under the martial law even in the places like Taiwan when I was a child can see that obviously developing some digital democratic capabilities it's not just a good governance system it's also good for cultural expression and economic reasons now I see with digital technology there is a question from a mother who has a son began beginning to interest in digital technology junior high school kid digital is very convenient but what do you think of pitfalls and damages well she says that because of the pandemic her son is really at home and sometimes he is taken to computers and even his physical body is a nuisance to him physical things are so nuisance and it's very difficult for him to feel the joy of reality that's what this mother is worried about of course she's not negating the digital technology but she's worried about it so pitfalls and demerits of digital technology how would you respond to this question if someone is addicted to a computer function a feature of a computer then the computer is no longer a assistant right the computer becomes the boss and that person become a addicting slave to the boss is no longer a assistive relationship and so I would say just as with any addictive potentially addictive substance treated as a symptom not as a sickness itself the sickness may be that the person young or old addicted to technology actually crave for more meaningful relationships in which case spending more time with them probably help or if they're craving for acknowledgement for a sense of belonging and in which case connecting to a local purpose-based community will probably help but at no time say computers are bad or computer games are bad or things like that for they're just vehicles personally I'm very easily addicted to touch screen so I almost never touch a screen I always use a keyboard a stylus or things like that because with this intermediary I must have a intention before I interact with a screen but if I use a touch screen for a prolonged time then I confuse my brain confuse the touch screen with my finger with my body it become kind of part of my body and I develop the same kind of addiction that people develop to their body parts and that's not a healthy relationship which is why some sort of understanding and some sort of mitigation is always very important Understood I have the next question maybe it is related question that digitalization has to be promoted in a society with diversity otherwise digitalization can become a tool to manage and control people as you said so digital technology will become both you are both then if that's the case we have to avoid that then how could we respect diversity so maybe we can use digital technology to make people respect diversity so what kind of activities are required of people to move in that direction? I think diversity is just a beginning and inclusion is really what the pro-social digital spaces are for that is to say if a space is diverse in its members but a member rarely learn from each other then it may be diverse in a representational sense but it's not diverse in a re-presentational sense in the sense that the group doesn't present themselves as a trans-cultural polity so my suggestion is to invite people to step outside of their comfort zone a little bit and then facilitate and participate in the discussions and see their original culture from the angle of a culture that I feel strange to and this is trans-culturalism seeing our own upbringing but describing it with a different culture a different language a different lens I talk about the citizens' initiatives and when we heard cross-ministerial conversations from the people's ideas we made sure that the facilitators are public servants in an unrelated ministry so when we talk about tax filing reform the facilitator may be someone from the Ocean Affairs Council but when we're talking about the Ocean Affairs Reform maybe the finance ministry will facilitate the breakout discussions and the reason why is when the Ocean Affairs Council personnel hold the tax filing system conversation they take the position of the tax filer and when the finance participation officer hold an Ocean Affairs conversation will they take the position of an amateur feature or surfer so they are no longer identifying with any particular positions they are instead sharing their experiences serving in the public service so by building cross-functional teams both in the digital realm and in face-to-face settings we can move from an identity-based position to an experience-based common values and conversations so listening to your remarks so we have to design and create places for space that is extremely important so from this point onward I would like to ship the gear to focus on Japanese children and young people the Japanese children compared to children of other countries are often said to have lower self-esteem self-affirmation according to you I hope that we can find the clues that Japanese kids become more positive and confident about themselves so if you see children in Japan who are being bullied or who are bullying others or those who remain as silent bystanders what would you like to say to each of these types of children when you are a child I understand you are bullied as well you openly talk about your experience so could you give some message to those children? Yes, first to like yourself and then to unmute yourself to like yourself means that whatever reason that you were bullied from those are not the excuses for you to internalize those bullies negative feelings toward you rather, you can't see your unique experience as something that you can contribute because once you make this experience public that's when the community, the society can learn how to adapt so that this kind of negative behavior do not happen again or is at least lessened, reduced because people become aware of it so making yourself heard and muting yourself saves the next person that's probably going to be bullied exactly the way you were by making it a public issue, a social issue you are making unique contribution to the society that people without your experience cannot make and that's unique about your experience So by making it public they can make contribution to the society and they can be aware of the fact that they actually contribute to the society I have the next question at the age of 24 years you made public the fact that you are transgender in Japan too, there are many people who are struggling with gender identity what kind of advice would you like to give to those Japanese people who are struggling with gender identity now? Well, I'm post-identities I'm post-gender meaning that instead of saying I used to identify as this and now I identify as that I now say I had a puberty experience when I was 13 and I had another puberty experience when I was 24, 25 notice the difference if I say I identify with this and then that it's like I move from one city to another and in my mind it will be a binary difference like people used to be close to me are now away from me but when I say oh, I had this experience and then I had another experience it means that regardless of your puberty experience probably we have something in common that we can't talk about so it brings everyone closer instead of pushing half of the population away so the experience will build up you can build up your experience one after another so in such a sense education I think is very important so what is the ideal education so let's talk about that under the COVID-19 on the scene of Japanese schools digital equipments and digital technologies have been introduced more and more rapidly but on the other hand there was a case in which a device provided by school was used for bullying which resulted in a suicide of a kid that is very saddening and also some kids have become addicted to computers as was mentioned earlier also if we introduce digital textbooks digital learning materials there are education businesses who will be able to exclusively get information regarding the study history of children so there is a possibility or risk that such education business would get exclusive access to data so digital technology and equipments to be introduced in education scenes what do we have to be careful about what do we have to be aware of in introducing digital technologies in education in my job description I said when we see the virtual reality let's make it a shared reality and the difference is of course that the virtual reality narrows our possibilities until such a day that only oneself and no one else met us in a virtual reality but a shared reality is a persistent part of the world it combines part of the physical part of the cyber but always expanding in the horizon so you can spontaneously meet people who share your values your interest and so on it's an expanding reality rather than a narrowing one so when we're designing education oriented spaces we must always make sure that they are open in its possibilities limited only by the creativity of the children allowing free remixes of the work that they do instead of being made into just one single mode at the request of one single large company or large state as you just alluded to which is why we always prefer open source, open hardware in our educational facilities it should be open and shared that is why that everybody will be able to use them and share them so then in such a process teenagers young people are becoming more and more participating in digital spaces may there could be fake news how children can gain skills to distinguish fake news from genuine news what kind of teaching is necessary at home and in school what kind of guidance is needed this is again another question coming from a viewer many people have such a concern in Taiwan we don't use the F word we use this information which are intentional untruth that creates harm it's like spam but spreading at a viral speed of scam so like scamming, spam and the best way to God against that is to develop competence as journalists journalism is the art and science and practice to collaboratively discover what's really going on and contribute to a balanced understanding of the world as it changes instead of fixating on one stereo one bias and so on journalism is about the rigor of balancing different voices finding an interpreted frame that allows further investigation and reporting to happen so in Taiwan instead of media literacy we teach media competence literacy is to read and view the media competence is to be the media to create media and so fact-checking like during our presidential debate the three presidential candidates in their forums and speeches were being fact-checked in real time by many people including middle school students and students also participate in the counting process after the election and helping to upload the films that they filmed to make sure that the reported issues around the election talent process can very quickly let the clarification spread faster than the rumors and there's many cases where when people worry about air pollution for example the middle schoolers just measure the air quality themselves as part of their even primary school science curriculum and in all these examples people understand what's actually going on they have listened to the various different positions and formed their own ideas just like a journalist and once they do that they become vaccinated in their mind against the virus of the mind that is the disinformation crisis Well you stand on the side of information givers and then you are vaccinated regarding against the disinformation during the school classes do they do that or is it an extracurricular activities? How do they teach it? It is part of our it is part of our curriculum if you're interested there is the end learn portal for media learning portal that has curriculum material for basic education and also for lifelong education Well that is something that we would like to see the penetration in Japan that kind of learning in classes Now the last theme Well actually this was not included in the last theme but there were questions like this This is a question from a high school student this student is active active on environmental issues but no matter how much the student works so hard but he does not feel that he is a part of the power to move the country he or she so how can what can I do to make my country better so that was the question from a high school student can you respond to this question in order to have the actual feeling that you are really making the country what should he do or she do? The most important thing is to see yourself as just a vehicle of the ideas worth spreading if I learn of a new way of doing things to die and I shared to one or two people on average if I share to more than one people then that idea goes viral it has a basic reproduction rate of above one and if you can help improving its value even more making it even more viral by making it more funny by I don't know writing a poem about it making internet memes with cute animals or whatever and then those ideas were spreading it was spread further because of you so you don't have to do everything yourself all you need to ensure is that after practicing an idea whatever you have learned make it even more viral than the idea you originally received so you become a trigger yourself right? that's entirely correct and then the trigger will have a cascading effect and then you don't need to teach more than two or three people because each of these people will teach three or four or five more people well today thank you very much for your contribution you are minister in charge of digital affairs there are so many Japanese wanting you to become the Japanese minister in charge of digital affairs so to the Japanese viewers can you leave any message for the Japanese audience and viewers? well you already have a digital minister and I look forward to work closely with your newfound digital agency and also with the entire Japanese population and I look forward really to visit in person again thanks to your generous vaccine donation and until we meet face to face I wish you all live long and prosper well thank you very much Audrey Townsend thank you and dear viewers thank you very much for your participation so this was the ASAHI World Forum 2021 Taiwan Digital and Democracy Townsend and the viewers thank you very much