Audrey Tang is a Taiwanese programmer and Taiwan's former Minister of Digital Affairs. They built civic technology platforms like vTaiwan and championed "radical transparency," the practice of opening government data and meetings to public scrutiny. This collection outlines their ideas on how to build software for public collaboration, counter political polarization, and structure self-directed education.

Visual summary of operating lessons from Audrey Tang.

Part 1: Radical Transparency

  1. On transparency at the root: "Transparency at the root means processes should be transparent by default." — Source: Freiheit
  2. On state surveillance: "Radical transparency means the state must operate openly for the public. In China, the same word means state surveillance." — Source: Cato Institute
  3. On trusting the public: "Government must show plenty of trust to the citizens to rebuild public confidence." — Source: Freiheit
  4. On public interest lobbying: "Through open discussions, instead of individuals lobbying for private interests, they must argue for public interest." — Source: Freiheit
  5. On text over video: "I prefer published text transcripts over raw live-streaming because participants can ensure context is accurate, preventing de-contextualization." — Source: Politics East Asia
  6. On healing polarization: "The goal is to heal a polarized society by radically trusting the people and making the state transparent to citizens." — Source: Harvard Business School
  7. On citizen co-creation: "Radical transparency is a tool for co-creation, allowing citizens to act as co-designers of public services." — Source: Freiheit
  8. On directional transparency: "I'm not here to make citizens transparent to government, I'm here to make government transparent to citizens." — Source: Zion Canyon Mesa
  9. On infrastructure for truth: "Our goal is to help people understand what’s really going on with their own eyes through transparent civic infrastructure." — Source: Conversations with Tyler

Part 2: Plurality and Collaborative Technology

  1. On the internet of beings: "When we see ‘internet of things’, let's make it an internet of beings." — Source: Framer Framed
  2. On shared reality: "When we see ‘virtual reality’, let's make it a shared reality." — Source: Framer Framed
  3. On collaborative learning: "When we see ‘machine learning’, let's make it collaborative learning." — Source: Framer Framed
  4. On human experience: "When we see ‘user experience’, let's make it about human experience." — Source: Framer Framed
  5. On the singularity: "When we hear ‘the singularity is near’, let us remember: the plurality is here." — Source: Framer Framed
  6. On defining plurality: "Plurality is a systemic way to co-create policies and norms by diffusing diverse viewpoints to discover uncommon ground." — Source: Right Livelihood
  7. On finding uncommon ground: "Technology must help us find the rare points of agreement that people with vastly different ideological views share but fail to recognize." — Source: Right Livelihood
  8. On conflict as energy: "Cyberspace is a conflict region, and my work turns that conflict into an energy source for co-creation." — Source: Right Livelihood
  9. On shared values: "Our shared values are hiding in plain sight." — Source: Zion Canyon Mesa
  10. On digital work: "Digital work is about forming new possibilities in societies, rather than just talking to machines." — Source: China Heritage

Part 3: Continuous Digital Democracy

  1. On democracy as technology: "Democracy is a type of technology and each person in a democratic polity is a technologist." — Source: CIPE
  2. On day-to-day engagement: "Democracy cannot just be providing a few bits of information every four years; it must be a day-to-day democracy where citizens set the agenda." — Source: CIPE
  3. On low bandwidth: "Low bandwidth is democracy’s biggest bug; traditional electoral systems only capture public input in short, infrequent bursts." — Source: GovInsider
  4. On rough consensus: "Digital tools should cluster diverse opinions to identify areas of agreement, rather than amplifying polarization." — Source: Zion Canyon Mesa
  5. On fast, fair, and fun: "Democracy should be fast in responding to needs, fair so every voice counts, and fun to ensure participation is energizing." — Source: Right Livelihood
  6. On government neutrality: "To prevent bureaucracy from killing ideas, I make sure not to have my own ideas; it is all the community's." — Source: Pioneers Post
  7. On decentralized decision-making: "We build tools that allow people to participate in decision-making processes rather than relying on centralized authority." — Source: GC Human Rights
  8. On continuous input: "Higher bandwidth tools allow for continuous engagement, turning democracy into an ongoing conversation." — Source: GovInsider
  9. On collaborative diversity: "Technology should support collaborative diversity rather than feed divisive algorithmic outcomes." — Source: GC Human Rights
  10. On debugging governance: "Democracy is a set of social technologies that can be debugged, updated, and continuously improved." — Source: 80,000 Hours

Part 4: The Conservative Anarchist

  1. On conservative anarchism: "I am a conservative anarchist. I reject top-down coercion while aiming to preserve existing traditions and social fabrics." — Source: Right Livelihood
  2. On voluntary cooperation: "Governance should focus on voluntary cooperation and implementing policies without giving or taking orders." — Source: MODA
  3. On forking systems: "Instead of destroying or disrupting systems, we should 'fork' or innovate within them while respecting institutional norms." — Source: The Guardian
  4. On preserving diversity: "We must respect diverse cultural traditions and protect the relational health of families and indigenous communities." — Source: MODA
  5. On avoiding coercion: "We aim for collaborative environments where people can work toward a good enough consensus without forced mandates." — Source: GC Human Rights
  6. On working from the inside: "You don't need to overthrow the government to change it; you can hollow it out and let citizens fill the space." — Source: China Heritage
  7. On non-monist affiliation: "The social world consists of a rich fabric of intersecting affiliations rather than isolated individuals or a monolithic whole." — Source: SoBrief
  8. On orders: "I have never given an order, and I have never taken an order." — Source: Right Livelihood
  9. On structural obsolescence: "Anarchism means creating structures that make the old coercive ones obsolete through sheer utility and cooperation." — Source: Wikipedia

Part 5: Humor Over Rumor and Fighting Disinformation

  1. On humor over rumor: "When people feel joy or humor, they're vaccinated against divisive outrage messages." — Source: Pioneers Post
  2. On the speed of fun: "Fun spreads more easily than outrage." — Source: Pioneers Post
  3. On prebunking: "We must prebunk disinformation by anticipating narratives and injecting factual humor before lies can take root." — Source: Center for Humane Technology
  4. On avoiding censorship: "Instead of taking down content, we empower citizens with tools for collective sense-making to naturally marginalize disinformation." — Source: The Rest Is Politics
  5. On resilience: "A healthy information ecosystem relies on the public's media literacy, not top-down state control." — Source: The Rest Is Politics
  6. On memetic engineering: "We use cute dog memes and humor to rapidly counter state-sponsored disinformation campaigns." — Source: Pioneers Post
  7. On digital architecture: "We must design social platforms that incentivize discovering commonalities rather than amplifying extremes." — Source: Zion Canyon Mesa
  8. On treating disinformation as a virus: "Like a pandemic, we fight mind viruses through early detection, rapid response, and public inoculation." — Source: Center for Humane Technology
  9. On community moderation: "Fact-checking is best done collaboratively by the community, operating transparently and openly." — Source: 80,000 Hours

Part 6: Open Source and Civic Hacking

  1. On the ethos of g0v: "g0v creates infrastructure for radical transparency, replacing broken government portals with open-source alternatives." — Source: Conversations with Tyler
  2. On civic hacking: "Hacking is not about breaking things; it is about finding novel, collaborative ways to solve civic problems." — Source: 80,000 Hours
  3. On public code: "Code paid for by the public should be available to the public, allowing citizens to audit and improve it." — Source: Freiheit
  4. On citizen innovation: "When the government portal was difficult to use, civic hackers simply built a better one at the '.g0v' domain." — Source: Conversations with Tyler
  5. On the permissionless state: "Civic technology flourishes when citizens don't have to ask permission to improve public services." — Source: GC Human Rights
  6. On the right to fork: "The ability to 'fork' a project ensures that if the community disagrees with a direction, they can diverge peacefully." — Source: The Guardian
  7. On protesters: "By inviting hackers into the ministry, we turn those who protest the system into the ones designing its solutions." — Source: Pioneers Post
  8. On open data: "Making government data open is a prerequisite for demonstrating state trust in the public." — Source: Dumbo Feather
  9. On digital plumbing: "Our job is to provide the digital plumbing that allows communities to organize themselves." — Source: Conversations with Tyler

Part 7: Daoism, Emptiness, and Identity

  1. On emptiness: "Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pot's not is where it's useful; the profit is in the use of what isn't." — Source: China Heritage
  2. On post-gender identity: "I identify as post-gender, rejecting rigid categorization and embracing flexibility." — Source: RadicalxChange
  3. On vulnerability: "Affirming my gender identity has informed my politics by giving me a greater understanding of what it is to be vulnerable." — Source: Global Citizen
  4. On bridging divides: "My Taoist beliefs act as a spiritual survival skill for staying calm and bonding across differences." — Source: Right Livelihood
  5. On language: "The flexibility of the Mandarin language, lacking phonetic pronoun distinctions, offers a different way to navigate gender." — Source: The Guardian
  6. On creating space: "Leadership is about hollowing out the center so that it may be filled and shaped by the people." — Source: China Heritage
  7. On fluid borders: "I see my identity as entirely fluid, prioritizing empathy over being placed in a specific societal box." — Source: Conversations with Tyler
  8. On adversity: "There is a crack in everything, and that is how the light gets in." — Source: IAIS
  9. On cyber peace: "It is time to work on peace in the cyberspace region by transforming friction into collective insight." — Source: Right Livelihood
  10. On sharing credit: "A successful public project is one where everyone involved feels they came up with the idea themselves." — Source: Pioneers Post

Part 8: Redefining Education and Learning

  1. On dropping out: "I dropped out of junior high school at 14 not to stop learning, but to start my true education." — Source: LA Times
  2. On contributing: "I treasure making contributions not just to specific people, but to pretty much everybody." — Source: Archive.tw
  3. On self-teaching: "The internet allowed me to crash conversations and learn directly from experts in philosophy and sociology without a degree." — Source: Archive.tw
  4. On collaboration over competition: "I eventually abandoned my competitive spirit for a philosophy of collaboration, no longer comparing myself to others." — Source: Note.com
  5. On media competence: "We must teach students to be digital producers and active participants, not merely passive consumers of media." — Source: Rana's Blog
  6. On outdated curricula: "I left traditional schooling because the curriculum was often outdated and could be mastered more efficiently through self-directed study." — Source: Nippon.com
  7. On stifling systems: "The rigid, competitive nature of mainstream education often stifles natural curiosity." — Source: SD2.org
  8. On continuous learning: "Education is not a phase of life; it is a continuous, community-driven process of collective sense-making." — Source: DemNext
  9. On intellectual autonomy: "True education gives individuals the autonomy to pursue knowledge at their own pace and apply it for the public good." — Source: Britannica