---
# System prepended metadata

title: Taiwan CivTech Ecosystem

---

Taiwan CivTech Ecosystem
===
## I. Objective [Facts — “What do we know?”]
1. Geopolitics
    <details><summary>Taiwan’s relationship with China and the USA</summary>

    * `NEED SOURCES`
    * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlJDKFNZJ2w&feature=youtu.be
    </details>

2. Taiwanese History
    <details><summary>Henry George's influence in Taiwan </summary>
      
    * Audrey thinks the legacy of Henry George is incredibly important to everything in TW. There's a whole foundation of civil society based activism that pre-dates the emergence of democracy there. Government had to respect this tradition of bottom-up, civil society led action because of things in the constitution written by Sun Yat-Sen.
        * Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487301 
    * National Land Tax Revenue in Taiwan? (% of GDP?)
    * Are zoning laws inclusive?  
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Major ‘cleavages’ in TW society</summary>
    
    * Distinction between different groups: North-South Divide, Aboriginal Taiwanese, people who came in the 18th century, people who came in the 19th century. Each of these has different political groupings, which is similar to how politics and ethnicity plays out elsewhere.
        * Colonizations from the Netherlands in the 1600s, China in 1683, and Japan in 1895
        * Migration of defeated Chinese nationalists in 1949
    * Rise of CSOs during the 80s and 90s and subsequent influence within the Taiwanese government.
        * Source: [Ch 8](https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1ba01yjyddGmef8dEpoAA24Sq_i5PnFLt)
        * How were those CSOs funded back then and how are they funded today?
    * History with authoritarianism; distinctions and similarities and overlaps between KMT &  DPP.
    * We want to show a clear before and after to deconstruct the myth that this could only happen in Taiwan because asian societies are [insert trope] (more stable, more collaborative, more tech-savvy, etc, etc.)
    * What are the racial stereotypes in Taiwanese society? What is identity politics like in Taiwan? Strawberry generation, lost generation & civic movements: legalization of queer marriage (by-laws, not in-laws innovation), etc.
Sunflower movement.
    </details>
  
3. Infrastructure & Partnerships
    <details><summary>Tech infrastructure</summary>
    
    * Broadband access and internet literacy
        * What were the policy tools to implement these digital public goods? 
        * What was the process like to pass these initiatives?
    * Coding education to address divides across identities
        * Details?
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Urban Infrastructure</summary>
    
    * Trash collection
    * [Taipei Planning](https://twitter.com/alfred_twu/status/1350723920144474115)
    * Policing
        * The death and life of great american cities, Jane Jacobs, intro mentions TW low crime rates due to dense social attention
        * CCTV effectiveness #dataprivacy 
    
    </details>

    <details><summary>Government-CivTech-Public Partnership Processes</summary>

    * How to gain trust and support of Executive Leadership?
        * Trust between people & govt
            * [Competent bureaucracy in Taiwan](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220389808422547)
            * High voter rate, even people flying back from overseas just to vote
    * Fighting Disinformation (govt partnership)
    * Technical people in political leadership?
    * Transversal questions: Adoption of technologies? Decentralization of technologies? Funding / Resources? Privacy & Data?
        * Tech skeptics: is this better than surveillance state or just different packaging with the same old tech imperialism?
            * What is the oversight on data for government? (e.g CCTV)
    * Processes
        * vTaiwan (# of occurrences, results): deliberation 'at scale'
            * [Uber](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k81R7m1QYErVTbuWlQTSXd-9RZikkgqL/view?usp=sharing)
            * ‘An environmentally conscious state, Taiwan imposed a blanket ban on plastic straws in July 2019. The ban started when a 16-year-old school student submitted a proposal using Tang’s platform. The idea was endorsed by 5,000 people and subsequently written into law by Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration. Taiwan is known for tapioca “bubble” tea, and Taiwanese consumers purchase 1 billion drinks every year. The ban therefore represented a revolution in consumer practices, brought about by a proposal from a single teenager submitted using Tang’s platform.’ [source](https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g00837/digital-minister-audrey-tang-taiwan%E2%80%99s-genius-and-her-unique-past.html)
        * Data Cooperatives (# of occurrences, results)
            * Collective climate/AQI sensors w/ students (govt/university partnership)
            * Mask Map (govt partnership)
                * [Number of mask donations](https://taiwancanhelp.com.tw/en-US/mask-dedicate)
        * Presidential hackathon (# of occurrences, results)
    </details>
    
4. g0v
    
    <details><summary>Philosophical underpinnings</summary>
    
    * [Manifesto](https://https://g0v.tw/manifesto/en/): Who wrote the first version? How has it evolved?
    * 没有人
   </details>
   
   <details><summary>Origins</summary>
   
    * How did it start? 
    * Who were some key early leaders? 
    * Initial struggles / how they were overcome. 
    * How did it grow? 
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Gathering Points</summary>
    
    * Hackathons
        * Organized by? 
        * Representation and number of participants?
        * Frequency?
        * Funding (for the food!)?
    * Slack
    * g0v websites
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Funding/Resources</summary>
    
    * How was it funded before? How is it funded today?
    * Other partners?
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Audrey Tang</summary>
    
    * [‘Because of her personal experience of taking an unconventional path to success, Audrey believes that while majority rule is at the heart of democracy, societies also need systems that allow law-abiding minorities to exert influence on society.’](https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/g00837/digital-minister-audrey-tang-taiwan%E2%80%99s-genius-and-her-unique-past.html)
    
    </details>
     
## II. Reflective [Feelings — “What are our (TWs) reactions?”]
1. Measuring Impact
    <details><summary>From the Digital Ministry?</summary>

    </details>

    <details><summary>From the hacktivists?</summary>

    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Technologies Impact</summary>
    
    * Are these collaborative technologies more productive than centralized ones?
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Attention Impact</summary>
    
    * Is the time of contributors being used effectively?
    * Where are people devoting their attention to? How was time spent before g0v, and now? Why?
    * Techies are skeptical that you can get citizens to spent time devoting their attention to public goods. 
        * Hypothesis: political hobbyism gets converted into time spent on civic tech.
    * Current engagement with social media platforms now?
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Climate Impact</summary>
    
    * Measuring carbon emissions of universal internet usage?
    
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Health Impact</summary>
    
    * Universal Health Care
    * Health indicators?
    
    </details>

2. People

    <details><summary>Perception of how civtech is perceived and utilized by broader Taiwanese society?</summary>
    
    * non-techies
    * tech-skeptics
    </details>

    <details><summary>Stories (and photos, even audio files, if permitted) of Taiwanese hacktivists and the 没有人 g0v movement?</summary>
    
    * Lived experience of winner of Presidential Hackathon
    * vTaiwan participant using pol.is? 
    * Before/after joining 没有人 stories.
    * Motivation
    * Rituals: "Nobody" / Food sharing
    </details>

## III. Interpretative [Ideas — “What insights do we get?”]
1. <details><summary>Open Source</summary>
    
    * A deep dive into open source collaboration principles and how Taiwan's hacktivists reoriented these principles towards the decentralized creation of public policies and building of public goods, in collaboration with central government offices. Here we could reconceptualize terms such as forking, merging, etc. as they apply into this new context.
    * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54140556
    * https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Coase%27s_Penguin
    * How their brand of open source politics enables the following: They don't waste people's time, they have a strong selfless leader, they have habit-forming patterns and they have an effective feedback loop mechanism. 
    * Open-source hardware (tsmc semiconductors - importance in geopolitical relationships) vs. software (linux/wordpress)
        * https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/taiwan-chips-and-geopolitics-part-1/
        * https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/opinion/taiwan-computer-chips.html
    * Seminal book: From counterculture to cyberculture (fred turner) - tracks origins of the Silicon Valley’s early vision of connecting world (open-source, free, accessible)
    * red hat guild (before, though now it's changed)
    </details>
    
2. <details><summary>Collective Intelligence</summary>

    * From artificial intelligence to collective intelligence: Taiwan's employment of civic tech as an expression of a human-centered (perhaps pluralist) philosophy of AI. We could then draw on the metrics collected in the previous section to make the case that the tradeoff between centralization and effectiveness is a false one. May look into Glen's recent debates with rationalists. 
    * Parallels with emergent strategy, warm data, regeneration
    * Commons/Digital Parks & Public Infrastructure
        * Elinor Ostrom - Governing the Commons
        * p2p foundation framework
        * land-based
            * tanzania: herding/nomadic cultures (Maasai)
            * india: one tractor and usage
        * QAnon/4Chan/Reddit (tolls vs. libraries)
    </details>

3. <details><summary>Compare ‘mainstream’ CivTech and Taiwanese CivTech Ecosystem</summary>

    * [Lessons Learned from LatAm CivTech](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vr77UpR8ty0vME57FynasppBuh1Q6fYN/view?usp=sharing)
    * [International Participation Models](https://www.bangthetable.com/blog/international-public-participation-models/)
        * [Arnstein's Participation Ladder](https://www.lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-participation_en.pdf)
    * Code for All
    * Code for America
        * Comparison between USA Insurrection & Sunflower Movement Parliament Occupation
    </details>

4. <details><summary>How TW CivTech Ecosystem mindsets/processes have been adopted into other communities:</summary>

    * Digital
        * MetaCartel - servant leadership model similar to the ‘nobody’ mindset of g0v. DAO and open-source organization mentalities.
    * Israel
        * Start-up economy
    * Singapore
        * https://better.sg/blog/tools/ (Raymond can connect)
    * USA
        * https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2021/1/15/22231241/california-coronavirus-vaccine-availability-moderna-pfizer
        * https://www.wired.com/story/group-house-covid-risk-points/
        * https://www.usdigitalresponse.org/
        * https://ktinboulder.com/2018/05/15/launching-your-state-digital-service/
        * https://edition.cnn.com/videos/health/2021/02/08/software-developer-builds-simple-massachusetts-covid-19-vaccine-website-olivia-adams-intv-newday-vpx.cnn 
    </details>
    
## IV. Decisional [Actions — “What should we do?"]

1. Implementation
    <details><summary>Integrating technology into the everyday lives of inhabitants?</summary>
    
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>Navigating tech critics?</summary>
    
    </details>
    
    <details><summary>General frameworks</summary> 
    
        * 1) capacity to sense what people want and determine shared values
          2) capacity for creation and building (robust grant/VC/open-source/patreon ecosystem) to turn sensing to process 
          3) looping between steps 1+2 to produce the thing to the people
    </details>

    <details><summary>Support from Taiwan</summary>
    
        * Database of English-speaking Ambassadors of TW CivTech Ecosystem?
    
    </details>

2. Measurement
    <details><summary>Potential metrics of success for a CivTech Ecosystem</summary>
    
    * feelings of trust in technology: confidence in role of tech in society as being things that give them agency. tech as tool that empowers them. rather than tech being something done to them.
    * resilience of social systems to a variety of the major crises or sources of discontent at present. includes types of conflicts around disinformation. where people devote attention. includes how climate is being dealt with. includes quality & quantity of life. how is people's health? (plus productivity, growth, and other standard indicators collected by others)
    * General happiness and well-being of the people
    * \# of builders in the CivTech Ecosystem
    
    </details>
    


