The Role of Technology and Democracy in the 20th Century

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Technology and democracy can co exist in a way that does not lead to the kind of distopia we tend to talk about here on your undivided attention. M audrey's work is about showing that it's actually possible to have technology and democracy co-exist with each other. How would governments imagine there ware cities and states that wanted to start implementing this? I mean, how would they actuall implement something like v tiwano poletis? You can, you can't read, you can read the crawlaw handbooka an radical exchange as well.

[This episode originally aired on July 23rd, 2020.] Imagine a world where every country has a digital minister and technologically-enabled legislative bodies. Votes are completely transparent and audio and video of all conversations between lawmakers and lobbyists are available to the public immediately. Conspiracy theories are acted upon within two hours and replaced by humorous videos that clarify the truth. Imagine that expressing outrage about your local political environment turned into a participatory process where you were invited to solve that problem and even entered into a face to face group workshop.

Does that sound impossible? It’s ambitious and optimistic, but that's everything that our guest this episode, Audrey Tang, digital minister of Taiwan, has been working on in her own country for many years. Audrey’s path into public service began in 2014 with her participation in the Sunflower Movement, a student-led protest in Taiwan’s parliamentary building, and she’s been building on that experience ever since, leading her country into a future of truly participatory digital democracy.