Jon Alexander

A Group of Hackers in Taiwan

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Jon

I'm going to take you into the realm of government and take you to Taiwan and back first to about 2012 when the government wanted to stifle and quieten the role of citizens saying effectively that 'we will look after everything that matters'. Taiwan had this thing called the economic power up plan in large part because they were starting to negotiate a big trade deal with Mainland China which would have ceded a lot of the country's sovereignty and agency to China. What happened at that time was a group of hackers started to organise. They called themselves gov zero and started to build parallel websites to the government websites in Taiwan to enable people to essentially participate in shadow government and vote and comment on things effectively saying that government isn't something that should be done for us, it's something that we should all be involved in. This grew over time and then 2014 came and a trade bill with China came to Parliament and started to be rushed through. An Occupy style protest started, students occupied the Parliament, and GOV Zero brought in a broadband connection and streamed into parliament the students debating the clauses of the trade bill. The critical moment came when the under pressure speaker of the parliament refused to stifle the voices of the students and suggested that this is what democracy looks like. Speaker Wang opened the space up and I think is a big hero. From that moment, the whole of the way Taiwan works has transformed with one of the leaders of the hacker movement becoming a mentor to a government minister then after the next presidential election in 2016, became a minister herself. She then led the country's response to the COVID pandemic, which was one of the most successful anywhere in the world and has been rooted in the principle of treating everyone in Taiwan as a participant and a source of ideas and energy.

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