Yeah, they've gone all the Baltic states that used to be within the Soviet Union. That's right. From an old way. That's right. They used to be sort of like us, but more, they wanted to ask for glory. That's right. They were literally on the front line. So they were very quick to get into the EU and China together. And then they're always on the line. It's not just you, it's from a foreign angle. We're still waiting for the camera. There you go. I would go through more or less the same as you probably read the question. Yeah, but feel free to go off the script. Because we arrived early, we've got plenty of time, so we can chat, whatever. I don't have anything else. Excellent. But I want to start with a brief background on how you became the digital minister. What's your school background? Give me a summary of where you are. I was still waiting for the camera? No, no, we're running. Oh, we're running? Okay, good. So a background of how I became the additional minister. All right. So I became the additional minister on October 2016, so about two years ago. At the time, the government was working on a plan called Asia Silicon Valley. And at that time, there was a kind of backlash from the people who actually have been to Silicon Valley to basically telling the government that cloning or Shenzhai Silicon Valley never works because SV is a very different culture. And so they asked around for people who actually have experience working with Silicon Valley. And so I was invited to a few roundtables to redefine that project. And so I came up with this idea of putting a dot between Asia and Silicon Valley so the program becomes Asia connecting to Silicon Valley. And so instead of copying Silicon Valley, we're now building ourselves as a connection between Asia and Silicon Valley. So I think that was the first foray into this new administration. Before this administration, I served as kind of a mentor or a lecturer for the public service on how to communicate with the civil society. So I already have some previous relationship and trust with the career public service. But for this administration, I think this discussion first became permanent because of the Asia SV. And after I helped them redefine it, I was tasked of asking for my friends, any friend to recommend to become a digital minister. So I asked around and people have their jobs, people have some reservations, and nobody really answered the call. So I was maybe giving a try myself. So that wasn't my expectation. And I always worked with the civil society. And so I worked out over a month my working condition. So I don't have a contract, I have a compact with the administration based on volunteer association, radical transparency, and also location independence. After the premier agreed to those three kind of conditions, then I became the digital ministry that worked with the government but not for the government. Can you give me something about your background from childhood? When you come from, what is your background in schools? Sure. I was born in Taipei in 1981. I started coding programming when I was eight years old. That was when the PC first came to Taiwan. I dropped out of junior high school when I was 15 to work on the web and also some startups. I co-founded one of the larger dot com startups in Taiwan. And then after that I joined the free software and the open source movements and contributed to many computer languages, most notably Pearl and Haskell, and worked with Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Social Text and also with Oxford University Press for lexicography. And so after working in the valley and in Taipei over the world, running hecas also over the world for about 20 years, I basically just retired and worked on the public good for full-time. That was around 2013, 2014. And then the sunflower movement happened and I helped the occupiers to work on their communication. So the apua was my idea but this radical transparency really helped people to do trust during the occupy. And so I call myself a civic hacker. You said dropped out of school. Do you ever finish school or what happened then? So when I was in junior high, that was 1996, I discovered this worldwide thing and people were putting their preference papers on it. And I just wrote the researchers and they just wrote to me directly. They didn't know I'm 14 years old or 15 years old. So I just started doing research with the research community. So I discovered you don't have to get a university degree or to get to graduate school to do cutting edge research. So what you have to do is internet connection and some email addresses. And so I told my principal that I want to start my education on the web and she agreed with me. So she was happy that was okay, that you dropped out and sort of educated yourself? Well it was illegal actually. So she had to tell the ministry of education that I'm a student there. She had to fix some records. But just a few years afterwards I started the first act of experimental schooling. Today the one is Asia's leading alternative schooling and education country. We can allow up to 10% of people to be self-educated or alternatively educated as part of our education system. And you didn't have to go back to school now to test to prove that you knew the curriculum? Not at all, not at all. But I did attend of course university and graduate school and classes whenever I feel the need. So basically I treat the college as a resource and do something completely different. Your position as a digital minister is there anything that makes your position here you work here different from others in sort of the same position in other countries would you say? Well I think location independence of my three working conditions. Location independence is perhaps the most interesting. What does that mean? That means I get to work anywhere. I don't have to work here. So that is my office, my usual office in Wednesdays. I have office hours so that people every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. they can just go to the Temple Flower Market and get into the social innovation lab and talk to me long as they agree for half hour conversation posted online. And every other Tuesday I also tour around Taiwan so that people everywhere in Taiwan can just meet me in their own local habitat. And it's not just me but also the 12 different ministries related to social innovation. They're in Taipei in the social innovation lab. So they see the local communities through my eyes through telecommunication. The people there can ask them questions for the other ministries to understand what kind of interpretation is to be made of this kind of communication. So I work in a very mobile way. I don't work exclusively in Taipei City and anywhere I work is still my office because most of my work space is on an online platform and our interns, our staff can also work anywhere from the world. What if a million people in Taiwan wants to communicate with you? They just email me. A million email? Sure. What's your response to that? Main, personally. But a million email, if you got that, how long would that take? A million emails would take maybe 10 million seconds. You got it worked out. It sounds as if it's impossible but you're saying it's possible. No, it's very easy. The point here is, as I said, ready for transparency. If I have to, of course, get five identical emails and respond to them one by one manually, that's impossible. But I don't do it this way. So when I become the additional minister, everybody can subscribe to my newsletter. There's about 1,400 subscribers. And everyone can ask me questions, of course. But I only answer publicly. And as soon as I answer, all the 1,000 subscribers get a copy of my answer. So there's no way that 50 people is going to ask identical questions because people see on the public record what I've already answered. And so they ask follow-up questions, of course. But it is not just for emails or people asking online, but it's also for lobbyists, for journalists who visit me. I insist to publish a complete recording or transcript online. So while I'm sure that a million people want to ask me things, they are never identical. And because it's not identical, they also take time to process the previous context of the previous exchange. So it's one million emails, but it's not anything exactly, of course. Okay. It seems as if you are sort of also a symbol now today of this new, open-tolerant, democratic Taiwan. Very co-transparency, yeah. But why then is Taiwan becoming or has become so tolerant and open? I think we still remember the martial law, M37. We still remember how it is like to have no speech freedom, to have no freedom of assembly and of protesting and things like that. So I think as with other newly democratic countries, we still remember how it's like to have no such freedom. And I like older republics who are more and more seeing this freedom as instrumental in Taiwan. We're still seeing it as fundamental because we just had it. But there are lots of countries, for instance in Europe, in more or less the same situation, having lived under authoritarian rule so they got their freedom, but they're not where you are. I think Taiwan benefits from a unique geography because although we're 23 million people, the island itself is kind of small from the north most to south most through high speed rails is just an hour and a half. And so because of that, it's very easy to have people who have similar feelings, similar emotions. We don't suffer from, for example, a very large landmass where people have very different cultural or very different living experiences. So when we say Robin as human right, we actually mean it. Anywhere in Taiwan, if we don't have Robin, it's our fault. And so because of that, we're seeing a culture that could be open because people can understand each other more. And also people don't waste much time to basically bridge the additional gap because as soon as we have ADSL or any other internet technology, we make sure that everywhere on Taiwan, they got access on that very same time. And because of this, there is a gradual acceptance of electronic technology, but it is not at expense of anybody in particular. And so because that gap is not widening, and so I think that is the root of this or more of the more tolerant culture because people feel that they have the equal opportunity for digital access and information access. Is this enough opportunity for digital access? I'm thinking of how the world is now becoming more and more polarized, we see it in Europe, we see it in my country, we see it in the US, especially in the US maybe. What about Taiwan? We don't have this polarization problem that we are suffering from? Well, I think in Taiwan for many, many decades, the main political polarization comes from just one dominating factor, which is our relationship with the PRC. And I think that kind of outweigh other potentially polarizing factors. And because of that, when we're talking about social issues, environmental issues, and things like that, they're all very mild compared to the relationship with PRC. And because of that, it is actually a lot of room for this kind of consensus-making technologies to work as long as it is not about the relationship with the PRC. What happens then? Then it becomes very divided. We see the main elections, the main campaigns and things like that roughly among the lines of people's different relationships or different feelings with the PRC. And so, yeah, our technologies, the civic technologies so far, we have not yet put this relationship into the test of our consensus-making technology. And I think part of the reason why this works so well is that this is kind of everything that people can feel that they have this personal mistake but without deriding the other people with different views as aliens, as people who are not human, of people who are of a lesser stature and things like that. People are very remarkably civilized when you talk about things that are domestic, social, or environmental, for example, about transportation, about autonomous vehicles, about things like that. People are able to treat each other in a very civil fashion. But the PRC and that issue of the PRC, do you see ways of overcoming a gap of divide here also? I mean, avoid polarization on that particular issue or diminishing it? Well, I think it's becoming more and more possible for people to talk about specific issues. And now that at the end of this year we're going to have referendums, this becomes one of the main venues that people voice their concerns and also try to define their ideal identity for Taiwan through the test of referendums as we see elsewhere. Previously, we don't have a really working referendum system. And so while people also want to, you know, discuss these kind of issues to test the referendum system, because the referendum threshold is kind of high, it wasn't very successful. Do you see referendums as a good way of finding out more opinions and how to legislate and how to find compromise or how do you see the referendum? Well, we designed a referendum act so that it put a lot of emphasis on dialogue and on public communication and debate preceding the referendum. So each referendum has to have, like I think it's five different debates on various regions in Taiwan. They have to be live streamed. They have to accessible online and things like that. So I think at least it enables a possibility for substantial discussion about that issue before people actually go to the voting booth. But on the other hand, this is the first time we're actually doing this. So I can't say whether it's more effective or less effective because it's literally the first time. We talk a lot in Sweden and I think in Europe and the States about social media today. Sure. And what does it do to us, to our society, to us as individuals. And it mainly means that it brings about polarization. Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and all that. How do you see social media? Well, we just mentioned three very different spaces and it's very difficult to find a generalization that talks to all of them. I think personally because I work on social interaction design and on mobile productivity tools in social text which very much resembles Twitter and Facebook, I always think that it is based on how people expect out of it. If people expect it as a way for people to connect in real space, in face-to-face, so it's a way to discover people with similar interests so it can discover that you're not alone in caring about a social environmental issue and it helps you to maybe organize some events together and for people to eventually meet. Then I think that is a very good use of social media internet because then people never feel alone. On the other hand, if it is working as a substitute for face-to-face communication and for real-world gathering, then people tend to put a lot of protection on each other's profiles and each other's text because there is no higher bandwidth communication to fill in the gaps so people just put their projection to it. I think that is kind of dangerous because then there is nothing for the projection to be based on and it creates a lot of opportunities for the messages, as you said, the polarizations to work with because there was no solid understanding of each other as people and just as carriers of messages. But you're talking about the expectations that people have on social media. But doesn't social media also create these expectations or influence us in a certain way so that maybe we have negative expectations or expectations that are based only on social media? But that is true for all media. It is not particular to social media. This is a very old idea about media literacy. If you see a printed paper and assume everything that is printed there was true, then it is not a very good case of media literacy which is why in our K-12 curriculum we basically position starting next year teachers not as an authoritarian source of truth but rather just a learner that learns along with the students and finds the information they have on the internet and also work on critical thinking and things like that Previously during the authoritarian era if things are printed in a certain font spoken in a certain voice then it is taken as the standard answer and a lot of media not just social media kind of piggyback on this kind of factor in people's mind to basically gain legitimacy without having the accountability to go with it and people's expectations from the source of the truth or the source of the news and more authoritarian then regardless of whether it is social media or traditional media there is a lot of room for disinformation to spread but if people learn critical thinking from a very young age then we have pretty solid evidence that regardless of its traditional or social media they will be able to think for themselves Have you found your own way or Taiwan's way or a positive way of using social media that is what I have been understanding anyway Tell me Right, so I think in Taiwan people generally feel that there is a certain space for public discourse there is certain space for people and family to catch up and we very rarely kind of confuse those two places together and I think it is true that people use instant messaging people use Facebook and things like that but we don't think that they are the place to have binding discussions on public issues so for example we have a dedicated platform for e-petition for regulation pre-announcements for participatory budgeting and also for a visualization of budgeting and it is called a JOIN platform at JOIN.gov.tw and of the 23 million people in Taiwan about 5 million people use it and people understand that if you are going to have a binding discussion on the national government that is going to happen on a domain that ends with JOV.tw and so JOIN.gov.tw where you can see literally all the different ministries all the 100 actually 1300 of your ministerial projects how their budgets are allocated and you can drill down to each one of it to leave a discussion and have a real conversation and because of these spaces and also e-petitions and so on people gradually learn that if you are going to talk in a public sphere there is a space conducted for public discussion and if you are going to catch up with your friend and family of course there are social media for catching up with your friend and family but we don't confuse the two together What do you achieve with this? Well I think there is a lot of effort to make the citizens more confident in how responsive and how accountable the government is doing because we are not just cherry picking a few projects to publish the budget we are not just cherry picking a few regulations to have a consultation it's every single budget item it's every single regulation and so because of this I think the citizens generally have a baseline understanding of how exactly the public service works and also they expect the career public service to have a real discussion through a representative from the legislator So the effect is that they are ready to accept more or compromise more Not at all I'm just saying they have more confidence of their status of citizens of people who have a right to ask the government to provide account for policy making and also it provides the career public service more room, more space answering 50 identical emails one by one there is one canonical URL for all the different government projects so they don't have to explain the same thing over and again because people understand that for each budget item for each regulation, for each petition there is a graph of all the spendings all the procurements all the months by months or quarter by quarter activities by the career public service just answering in real time I have one question I don't know if it's accurate understanding but I will explain your process for solving conflicts and creating laws that most people sign on to So for controversial issues that's related to digital economy or people's surface through e-petition we usually go through a consultation process remodeled from a Canadian methodology called focus conversation method and it's four steps it's facts, feelings ideas and decisions on the fact stage for example when Uber first came to Taiwan and started engaging with people with their professional driver's license we first asked people to contribute evidence that they have about a number of vehicles, timelines that Uber is coming to Taiwan and things like that so we establish about the stakeholder communication the very set of basic facts that everybody can agree on and even the writing of the issue at hunt we eventually settled on people without professional driver's license picking up passengers and charging them for it so it's like absolutely neutral way of stating a simple fact that it's happening and then we ask people's feelings about the facts you can feel happy you can feel angry, it's all okay so we leave like a month or so for people just to check with each other's feelings and design with AI-powered conversations for the resonating feelings to be surfaced and the polarizing feelings to be acknowledged and then we start ideation and using design thinking methodologies we work with stakeholders to identify which of their possible solutions correspond to the things that can take care of the most people's feelings and finally we turn them into law and so for the feeling part we use AI-powered conversation so that people can see where it is done among their social media friends and families just by clicking agree or disagree on each other's feelings and so every time we run this over three weeks or four weeks we'll always see that people respect each other's divisive statements but focus far more time on the statements that are consensus and that is because there is no reply button you cannot attack each other if there is no reply button if you see a few feelings you don't agree whether you write something else or you kind of compete but for resonance for things that they think everybody can feel the same way and once we get those feelings and we check with those stakeholders and make sure that they come up with coherent ideas that take care of those feelings one by one and so this is a way that basically we don't confuse the feelings and ideas stage we make sure that people's feelings are properly acknowledged before moving on to ideation these are difficult and Uber is serving unions and we livestream these consultation meetings so that people who set an agenda we only use the consensus items and nothing more as the agenda for this kind of consultation with stakeholders and because it's livestream when Uber agreed saying we will work with our drivers to help them obtain professional driver's license they cannot take back their position because it's livestream they're bound to their words and so because of that when we did the regulation everybody saw it coming which is why you can call taxi now from Uber app in Taiwan and taxi companies are also rolling out their Uber license so they're all in the same platform all in the same conditions they're competing fairly and then everybody's happy also the other companies well everybody can live with that I wouldn't say everybody's very happy but at least people can live with that and that's an important part of the minister or things like that because it's really open multi-stakeholder consultation and they agree on they agree on the basic principles because if they don't show up or they go against the people's consensus feelings then they become the villain of the story and people don't want to be that so they come up with a set of ideas they can all kind of compromise on that so instead of being destructive they're being constructive you also talked about the virus of the mind which is a famous book and you mentioned Uber when they came in it was a virus of the mind what do you mean by that? so I mean it as something that spreads from one mind to another at that time they were banking on this term called sharing economy which means very different things to different people but for Uber at that time in 2015 it meant dispatch cars better than loss so we just felt that that's the payload and it can spread from a driver to some passengers to install the app and to more drivers to more passengers and maybe someone become a driver for Uber for a couple weeks discovered it's not a very good deal and just quit because there's no insurance and things like that at the time but still during that course of a few weeks they already have infected other people with this virus of the mind so it's a kind of epidemic situation where people generally feel maybe not like that after actually driven for Uber for a few weeks but during that time they already have infected more people and because of that we don't negotiate with epidemic because it's not you don't negotiate with the flu it's not the same kind of currency so what we're saying is after you feel deeply listen deeply to each other's feelings people become immune to those polarized ideas people become capable of thinking through empathy of how other people think about this would it be correct to say that the virus of the mind is sort of an idea that at first seems so clever so smart so natural it's above the law even it works outside the law it's a meme basically that you would want to spread it regardless of whether it is actually factual yeah how much of an example to the world that I won't be as this all the time as democracy I think Taiwan is definitely at least in Asia we're the most open civil society if you look at the civic monetary for example that measures the freedom of assembly expression as a one Taiwan is definitely the only one that is completely open and so I think we serve as a kind of existential proof that you can be this open as civil society that you can work with civil society as partners that the government doesn't have to dominate policymaking and that democracy still works very well and these achievements how is it seen in China? well I think the PRC at the moment is looking at Taiwan and the kind of civic technologies we're developing many people in PRC maybe they don't call them civic hackers for obvious reasons but they still work on for example social enterprises or for example they still work on participatory budgeting on a smaller scale level and things like that so generally I think the technologies we develop are what we call appropriate technologies meaning that it fits whatever the social environment that they're working with this is certainly not something that we patent or you have to subscribe to Taiwan or to pay yearly license fees or whatever like that so for bits and pieces we're also seeing a lot of adoption in even authoritarian environments that don't have a good connection to the global internet still these technologies can work in this context and even intranet like within a company non-profit as well so we're seeing pretty good adoption in even authoritarian areas and that includes PRC so they're picking up on some of your ideas here you were mentioning as a social enterprise a social enterprise is basically as a group with a mission or purpose to make the world better socially or you know environmentally and driven by this purpose they offer services or projects with the market and through trading with the market they realize their impact and through doing business solve those environmental or social issues in Taiwan we've got like 20 years of social enterprises before actually the term social enterprise gets imported from the UK and so for example the home makers union consumers co-op they've been around for more than 20 years it's a co-op of home makers who basically collaborate to purchase agricultural products that are friendly to the environment and just by uniting the consumers efforts together they were able to chart the southern farmlands and things like that and convince the agricultural workers to work in a way that is sustainable to the land or for example the children are as foundation there are non-profits who work with people with Down syndrome for example and I should just show you actually my office in the social innovation lab and actually Down solution innovation labs office there's the soccer field that is drawn by people with Down syndrome so the children are as foundation work with people with different mental development and basically discovered that they have talents for art they have talents for maybe bakery they have talents for a lot of things that you wouldn't think that they have talents for and developed them into a responsible partner in the society instead of just people feeling that they are vulnerable people to be taken care of and so I think the more business they make through bakery or through design or through whatever the more people they would be able to employ with Down syndrome and other mental development and so that is also a classic decision to pass and self confidence prices yes right all the positive benefits so these examples they do business but as part of their business they make the environment or the society better for themselves for themselves someone said to me before going to Taiwan that democracy open tolerant society that's our best defense against PRC and their ambitions to taking mental verification what do your friend mean by that that there is a threat I guess that there is a worry that the giant across the street who is swallowing one day because it seems to be the ambition we hear a lot but the open democratic society the more open the more democratic Taiwan becomes the better our defense against such an ambition I wouldn't think of it as a defense I mean it's clearly different models that we're experimenting and just like all experimentations it works out pretty well our model also have the possibility of spreading and also influencing our nearby regions which are maybe allured at this moment by authoritarian models because they think it's more efficient or whatever but because in Taiwan we think about efficiency in terms of triple bottom line like it has to be effective for the society, for the environment and for economy and not just for one and sacrificing the other two and so as more and more people see that it's only through open tolerance democracy can we actually deliver innovations that work for everyone and leave no externalities to other domains of the society or the environment I think that idea can catch on and also people can look to Taiwan for all ways of delivering such solution innovations in a peer-to-peer fashion modern top-down fashion so I don't think we're playing defensive I think we're experimenting and if the experiments that are successful the fruit of our experiment is widely accessible to the entire society that is part of either this region or anywhere in the world really so instead of defense weapons what does it's weapons tools to arrival there's a movie about people who think weapons but they actually just mean tools so virus of the mind could it be the virus of the mind it's open tolerance society more people more countries they will see the benefits of it and spread such a virus of the mind well I think it's like a inoculation it is inoculation against virus of the mind by perhaps developing better tolerance better diversity because this really is the idea of biodiversity if you have a society that is more diverse that allows people coming from different backgrounds different ethnicities, different cultures to work with each other then even a very compelling virus of the mind comes it only affects one small fraction of the population in different angles and to kind of modify the virus into something that is useful for the society on the other hand if you insist on a very homogeneous society that everybody is indoctrinated to think exactly the same way even though it may be seeming efficient or linear kind of fashion they are much more suspectable to a new idea that just paralyze the society or just take the society to a very dangerous turn so ideas like feminism and maybe dogmatic religious ideas those are the examples you will be sure to or social media basically you just mentioned on social media it is very easy for people to spread ideas they like without fully understanding the repercussions I think Taiwan benefits from a very diverse society so that although geographically we are pretty together people were able to kind of openly look at the different angles of any new idea in a two time one instead of you know people just blindly follow the inspiration that you personally then whenever I talk to people about China and their ambitions I think everyone has said that yes there is a world yes I am of it or some are even scared most are you know contacting their daily lives and they are happy with that but there is no reason I think it is of course a fact that people here are worried that PRC will for example develop into a completely different track that may be irreconcilable because there is the kind of democracy that we are working on but on the other hand I personally don't have that worry I think what we are focusing on now has a much more universal appeal and also the PRC I think even within the CCP even within the Communist Party in the PRC there is also people working on a rule of law working on accountability working on corruption prevention under the umbrella of course of the CCP and so I think I am still pretty optimistic I think they are at the stage where they really have to think very carefully about what kind of a governance model is sustainable in the long run and I think there are very few sustainable models that can kind of withstand the rapid emergence technology change and so I do think although fascism or authoritarianism has a kind of temporary allure democracy and diversity is going to be an idea but in the open of the practice society you have lots of minds thinking for themselves for their society their country looking at these problems of different levels but in an authoritarian society it seems there are very few people well everybody could be thinking but there are very few people has the voice and to make the distinction so it seems as if even if people are thinking on the other side of the street it may not be something or in May one thing of the internet the technology is that it is designed to survive censorship it is designed to survive even a large scale war that is what internet was designed for and so we see a lot of people and I am not just focusing on the PRC everywhere in Asia and there is a repressive society when the states you know, cordons of the connection to such a media overseas or things like that we still see people creatively using internet technologies they may have the best minds working on those internal communication methods that allows whistleblowers allows people who can human right to still communicate safely among themselves although it may be very difficult to communicate outside there is still a lot of liberating potential on the internet protocol for people to communicate among themselves internet is democracy well internet itself is based on the idea of voluntary association people following a protocol discover each other they can innovate without permission even so I wouldn't say it is democracy, it is actually ad hoc like people who ad hoc in a way that discover each other and want to work on something the internet provides a neutral platform for people to collaborate in exactly such a manner although having any say or control over the communication of course that is the original idea of the internet nowadays when people voluntarily go to the same website of course that gives that website a lot of control but on the other hand we are also seeing a new generation of what we call the decentralized web the interplanetary file system people the spirit and there is many other dweb decentralized web innovators at the moment are working on a way that basically frees people from any central website or controlling point of course the rising kind of star of that the distributed web is what we call distributed ledger technologies or blockchain but there are many other non-blockchain technologies as well that builds up this kind of distributed trust okay you are saying you are pretty optimistic and at the same time we see this polarized world where the polarization seems to be growing and in Europe and also in the states we see this nationalistic meaning that is populist sometimes called nationalist and at its worst it is more less fascist use taking less but less the nationalistic populistic definitely and it is sort of yeah the gap is widening between the sort of ideas of living with democracy and other ideas can you not worry about that it really is just a short term of people working with same mobile phones working with a small screen that doesn't allow a carefully balanced conversation of seeing people through the proxy of short videos instead of through deep listening to one another and so on I think this is a collective reaction of a new form of media that people still don't have quite the grasp of the limitations and the expectation to it so I think it is really a literacy issue and we see very similar things when when TV first came about when advertisement over TV first came about when radio first came about there is also a lot of period of panic and worry about like through radio people can mind control the entire population of Star Wars so every new media has its first generation of people pioneering the use but also abused but I think over time we start to learn the boundaries and limits and the best practice or at least better practices of using these new media and we see this rapidly happening I think in the media circles in the people now seeing the limitation of social media and even in device and operating system makers that are putting a lot more emphasis on privacy thanks to GPR and friends and the use of people's time and their attention and so yeah I think many of my designer friends they were just in Copenhagen doing this Copenhagen catalog that charters kind of a bureaucratic oath of designers and coders who are making technologies in a way that is responsible and sustainable for the humanity and not just for paying users or addicted users if there is anything you would like to add to this conversation that you forgot to ask you about or that you would like to just add for my knowledge well just read the creator so two years ago when I first became the additional ministry I said I had a compact another contract and then they still asked me a job description so I just wrote a small poem as much of description which I'm going to redo now so it goes like this when we see internet of things let's make it an internet of beings when we see virtual reality let's make it a shared reality when we see machine learning let's make it collaborative learning when we see user experience let's make it about human experience and whatever we hear is near that is always remember the plurality is here thank you thank you very much that was nice good thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you this one should be the slides we should do the poem also let's have slides so let me know when that thing starts when we see internet of things let's make it an internet of beings when we see virtual reality let's make it a shared reality when we see machine learning let's make it collaborative learning when we see user experience let's make it about human experience and whenever we hear that a singularity is near that is always remember the plurality is here and so this is the omegle's union in the children's foundation that is the two largest and oldest social enterprises in Taiwan it's just their logo and when I talk about the focus conversation method or the objective reflective interpretive and decisional I talk about the facts the feelings about the facts the ideas that takes care of the feelings and the decisions that reflect those ideas and that could be like the legislation and it could be the regulation of legislation and finally this is my office that's your office, where is that it's near the Jingle Flower Market it's in Central Park the Tai Tai Forest Park it's in the Central Taipei and just nearby it there's the Jingle Flower Market and we're just in the corner you can go through it on the other side of Jingle Flower Market it's just called such an innovation map so I can go, we can go there it opens every day from 7 until 11 p.m could you write it down and many a time there's like if you came a few months before you see those self-driving tricycles there so it's a very popular place for a lot of the experiments alright, so we're good yes thank you so you're going home now or yeah, this room my home is just walk to that office okay so usually I prefer just to walk to to the office and back but this place is special for filming so where and when are you going to put that usually we do it after we do so it could be like an in-article and you can set a time but we can also upload it to YouTube as a kind of unlisted video any that we don't publish it so you can use it as footage yeah, so so you can close it yeah, I'll close it okay


Regular verbs versus phrasal verbs from espressoenglish.net. A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition that has a specific meaning. Sometimes the meaning of the phrasal verb is quite different from the meaning of the regular verb by itself. I often see students make mistakes by mixing up regular verbs and phrasal verbs. Here are some common verbs and phrasal verbs in English and the situations in which each one should be used. If you'd like to learn 500 phrasal verbs, check out my course, Phrasal Verbs in Conversation. Click on the link in the video to find out more. Grow versus Grow Up. The verb grow is used when things increase in size and development. For example, the country's economy is growing. Many different kinds of flowers grow in my garden. The phrasal verb grow up is used specifically for children becoming older and more mature. For example, my five-year-old son wants to be a firefighter when he grows up. I'm very thankful that I grew up in a loving family. There's one more situation where you can use grow up. If you say an adult needs to grow up, it means he or she is acting immature, like a child, and should act more mature, like an adult. Find versus find out. The verb find is used when you locate an object or person. It can be by accident or on purpose. Find is usually followed by a noun. For example, after searching for an hour, I found my keys under the bed. Today's my lucky day. I found a dollar on the sidewalk. I'm trying to find Barbara. Have you seen her anywhere? The phrasal verb find out is used specifically for discovering information. Again, it can be by accident or on purpose. Find out is usually followed by a subject verb or a question word. For example, don't let your husband find out that we're planning a surprise party for him. I finally found out why the TV remote wasn't working. The batteries were dead. Find out can often be replaced in the sentence with discover, but in everyday English it's more common to say find out for discovering information. Break versus break down. If something breaks, it means it separates into two or more pieces. For example, if the wine glass falls off the table, it will break. He broke his leg in the car accident. In this case it refers to breaking the bone inside his leg. The phrasal verb break down is used specifically for when a car or another machine stops functioning. For example, my car broke down on the highway and I had to call for help. A poorly maintained machine is more likely to break down. You might also hear someone say that a person broke down. This means the person suddenly became very emotionally upset. Give versus give away. The verb give refers to transferring something to someone else. For example, Jen missed class yesterday. I'll give her my notes so she can study. My best friend gave me a pair of headphones for my birthday. The phrasal verb give away means to give for free something that would probably cost money in a normal situation. For example, when I bought a new computer I gave away the old one. This means I gave it to someone for free instead of selling it for money. The radio station is giving away two tickets to the rock concert. Again, these tickets would normally cost money, but the radio station is giving them away for free. Use versus use up. If you use something, it means you utilize it. You do an activity with it. For example, you should use a sharp knife to cut those vegetables. I used a lot of sugar to make this cake. The phrasal verb use up means to consume something completely so that nothing remains. In the picture you can see that someone used up all the toilet paper. There is none left. Here are a couple more examples. I used up my cell phone battery and now I need to recharge it. Let's make spaghetti so we can use up this leftover tomato sauce. Drop versus drop by. If you drop something it means you let it fall down from your hand. For example, oops I dropped my fork on the floor. Please don't drop those boxes. Their contents are fragile. The phrasal verb drop by has a totally different definition. It means to visit a place quickly and informally. For example, my friend is sick. I think I'll drop by and see how she's doing. This means visit her house quickly and spontaneously. I've just moved into a new apartment. You should drop by sometime. That's a way of inviting the person to visit. Show versus show off. If you show something to someone it means you display it so the other person can see it. For example, David showed me his new watch. Let me show you how to use the coffee machine. In this second sentence, show refers to demonstrating a skill so that you can see and learn it. The phrasal verb show off means to act in an arrogant way as if you are superior to others. You want to call attention to how great you are. For example, David bought an expensive watch and now he's showing it off. In the previous sentence, David showed me his watch. That's neutral. But in this sentence, David is showing off his expensive watch. It means he is doing it arrogantly.  Again, show off means he wants to call attention to himself and how great he is. Pick versus pick up. The verb pick has several meanings, but one of the most common is an informal word for choosing or selecting. For example, when you order ice cream, you pick which flavor you want. The company picked the best candidate for the job. Pick up means to take something and lift it up physically. For example, your dirty clothes are on the floor. Please pick them up. He picked up a book and started to read. We can also use pick up for taking people in your car. For example, I pick up my kids from school every day at three o'clock. My car is being repaired, so my friend picked me up from work and took me home. One of the best ways to learn phrasal verbs is in context. My phrasal verbs in conversation course can help you do that. Click on the link in the video to take a free sample lesson. And if you like it, you can sign up for the course. Thanks for joining me today, and I hope you've enjoyed learning about these verbs and phrasal verbs.


Everyone is fascinated by looking at another human being. There's something very intimate about the ways that people assume that by looking at certain parts of the portrait, they'll be able to understand who these people are, where they come from, and why they happen to be in this museum today. In my work, I try to slow down and see individuals. I'm standing on the shoulders of all of those artists who came before me, where there's a space for a new way of seeing black and brown bodies all over the world. A New Republic is an exhibition that allows for every single moment within my career all of the different acts, all of the different bodies of work to be seen.  It's really interesting to be able to look through the history of some of the great portraits and to say, what is it about the trappings of empire and power that we can use in the 21st century? What does it look like to be graceful? What does it look like to be proud, noble? How do you look at a young black man in American society? It's a very important question, especially at this moment in our culture. The way in which the body is seen has a lot to do with light. How does the artist choose to allow light to flow across the body? For the last 10 years, I've been obsessed with stained glass. What I wanted to do was to create a body of work in which empathy and the language of the religious and the rapturous all collided into one space. Black women have always been at the core of my thinking around portraiture. You see so many portraits where the male figure stands dominant to the forefront of the painting and women and children and land are seen in equal measure as possessions. In my own work, the women are strident. They take the front. But there's also a sense of mystery. We don't really know who these women are.  It's both the type of communication act and armor. And hair is principal within that. You see hair going outside of itself becoming so fabulous, so extraordinarily large that it folds in under its own weight. It's beauty that becomes decay. It's a place in which the imagination starts to happen. The Brooklyn Museum is extraordinarily important for me. I remember having my first exhibition here. Being able to celebrate this moment in a place like Brooklyn and so many of the people who are in these paintings come from is an incredible blessing. In some sense, what I'm trying to do is to come to terms with the ways in which black American culture has been beamed out into the rest of the world. And that is a type of new republic.


so many of us either blame or give credit to others for how we feel you make me so mad you make me so sad and even you make me so happy the reality of it is is that nobody can make us feel a certain way and in this video i'm gonna prove it to you what is up everybody this is chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about helping you improve your mental and emotional well-being so if you're into that kind of stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because i make a ton of videos just to help you out but anyways the topic today is how we blame others about making us feel a certain way and then we do things based on the way they made us feel so this is a very important mental health topic so i'm gonna warn you at the beginning of this video when i give you some examples it's gonna come off a little tough lovey but i guarantee by the end of this video you're going to feel empowered okay so let's get started all right so let's imagine a scenario okay let's imagine you have a friend you may not even have to imagine this let's let's think about your friend who is always late they're always late maybe 15 minutes late maybe you're that friend okay and let's say you're supposed to meet him for coffee at 10 o'clock in the morning okay so you go and you're going to meet him for coffee you sit down you get there maybe five minutes early then all of a sudden it's 10 o'clock now you're angry you're angry and they show up 15 minutes late and at the end of it you're mad you're upset you're upset because they were late now let's do the exact same scenario but let's say you're there and i don't know maybe you have a book with you or maybe you found something interesting on social media maybe maybe one of my videos right and you're sitting there and you're watching it or you're listening to it or you're reading it and all of a sudden 10 o'clock's rolling around and all of a sudden you think because you're so sucked into this book or a show or whatever you're doing you're saying man i hope they show up 15 minutes late because i'm really into this right now and then they show up 15 minutes late and it's not a big deal so the same person was late by 15 minutes but in one of those scenarios you were upset and in the other scenario you didn't mind so based on that how could that person make you feel a certain way even though they didn't change at all what's that telling you here's another example okay let's say in one scenario you know you're you're trying to get ready you know in the morning to go to work and you know just things start going wrong around the house and maybe maybe you were trying to make some food and you mess that up or if you got kids maybe your kids were making your runway or whatever it is then you drive off to work and you're stuck in traffic and you're just so upset oh these drivers make me so mad they make me so angry they're gonna make me late right then you show up late and you're upset about it okay now let's take that exact same scenario but everything goes really smooth in the morning you make your breakfast or you get your kid ready and you take him to school you're great you're so good even that you're early you left 15 or 20 minutes early there's the exact same amount of traffic but you're cool you're chilling you're just listening to your music maybe you got some Spotify on and you're just jamming and you show up to work on time and you're totally cool the traffic didn't change in either one of those scenarios but in one you were really upset and in the other you didn't mind are you starting to follow me here are you starting to see how other people and situations cannot make us feel a certain way this is extremely important and once i realized this my life started to get better my mental health started to improve because i was constantly playing the victim if you will if people places and situations would just act right do the things that i thought they should do everything would be fine quit making me feel a certain way but when i started to look at this in a different light from a different perspective i'm like oh wow nobody can make me feel a certain way see what's really fascinating to me is about our thoughts and our emotions and things like that it's kind of like the weather all right so it's not always raining but if certain circumstances come into play like temperature air pressure cloud formations if these things come together then it rains it's kind of like our emotions we're not always mad we're not always sad we're not always happy but if certain things align it can trigger one of these emotions so this is really important this is actually a concept that i learned from meditation but the reality is we need to quit playing the victim and making believe that people are making us feel a certain way and for me it's actually quite silly when you think about it right like if somebody had the power or the ability to make us feel something so easily then wouldn't we be just as able to make ourselves feel a certain way wouldn't that be great if every time we were sad well i boom i'm gonna feel happy i'm gonna make myself feel happy right or i'm angry boom i'm gonna make myself feel not angry oh i'm anxious boom i'm gonna make myself feel calm no it's not that simple so why are we make believing that other people have so much power that they can make us feel a certain way and this is what i'm talking about this concept this idea is really empowering once i figured this out i'm no longer the victim i'm no longer the victim of everybody and everything going on around me okay like they're not in control of my emotions hell i'm barely in control of my emotions you know what i mean but what's the solution to this my personal solution is meditation meditation is my solution to dealing with my thoughts my feelings my emotions because what meditation teaches me to do is to not run away from them okay not to distract myself not to go out and do toxic behaviors meditation for me helps me sit and embrace these emotions and what it's doing is it's actually rewiring your brain to not want to run away from those feelings so much you remember that these things are going to pass and for the most part these are just sensations in your body the issue that we have with most of these emotions and feelings is that we latch on to certain thoughts and we play them over and over and over and over and over again and it's usually not helpful it's definitely getting more into the problem rather than the solution and when we have sets on these thoughts it makes us feel even worse you see what i mean so meditation for me helps me embrace these things and just sit and be with my feelings be with my emotions and i'm able to get some clarity on the situation i start to realize oh i'm not mad at the traffic i'm upset because all these other things happen this morning right oh i'm not mad at the girlfriend i'm not mad at my son or i'm not mad at my co-worker i'm mad because these other circumstances happen and then we start to get this pause because one of the issues a lot of us have is that we lash out on the wrong people in the wrong moment because somebody just said the thing that set us off but really we were set about a million other things that happen so when we start to practice meditation my preferred practice of meditation is mindfulness which is a lot of moments throughout the day of being very present and noticing what's happening in my mind as well as in my body and when i can do that i can work on myself i can improve my mental health but anyways this is this is a topic i want to touch on based on some stuff that i've been seeing you know online and people tweeting about and stuff like that i'm like nobody can make you feel a certain way so i hope this video helped you out if you think it might help somebody else make sure you go share it share it on facebook or instagram or twitter or whatever you gotta do baby just go out and share it all right but that's all i got for you if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're new here again i'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional well-being so make sure you click that subscribe button and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon i love all of you so so much and if you want to remind people to focus on the solution bam check out the rewired soul merch shop on the back of every shirt it says focus on the solution it's a great little reminder all right thanks so much for watching i'll see you next time


The Q-Focus is a political cartoon by Louis Dali Rimpel. I thought it would be a great one because when I looked at it, I was shocked. It is a caricature of Uncle Sam in a classroom. It's from 1899, so it's a year after the Spanish-American War and you've got Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, sitting in the front row of this classroom and then sitting in the back, you've got California and Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska. So immediately, there's sort of frightening ideas about assimilation and these racist assumptions that justified US Empire building. I zoomed in on the political cartoon to use as my Q-Focus instead of giving them the entire cartoon. So it was a focus on the children or the nations sitting in the front of the classroom. That's what I wanted them to be asking questions about. When I'm picking a Q-Focus, I really wanna pick something that at the end of a unit or a lesson, I want my students to look at and appreciate and appreciate the complexity of it. And this one was a complex depiction of different forms of racism. How are you doing? Good morning. All right, okay, great. We'll get started. The main objective, analyze cultural beliefs and attitudes that justified US imperialism. And we're gonna use the question formulation technique to generate, categorize and prioritize questions about a primary source. And then throughout, we'll be researching and then writing a response to our question that we generate. And it'll have claim evidence reasoning and then reasoning with complexity. Okay, so if you guys can click on that link, that should take you to a Google doc and we'll be working from this Google doc. This image is going to be the Q-Focus, okay? I'm gonna be the scribe. I'm gonna write down every question as you state it. And let's go for it. Is that Uncle Sam? There's a caricature face of the black characters on purpose. What is written on the light blue book on the left side? I'm the indigenous man in the back. Was that the door? Why are they sitting on what looks to be like a park bench? What is written on the blackboard? Is the man at the door Chinese? My initial thoughts were, oh, we're gonna talk about American imperialism and white man's burden and all these other aspects of imperialism. But the QFT process really enlightened me because we usually look at one scope of it and it's from the American perspective, but we don't look at the perspective of those who are being subjugated, which I found very interesting because we're looking at the opposite perspective instead of the American one. What are they reading? Why do they have satchels, I think that's what they're called, on different countries? When was this made? Why are these specific countries listed? When I saw the picture, I didn't really understand what was going on. I was more so confused because the first thing that came to mind to me was racism and I didn't understand how that was connected to imperialism. I was squinting, trying to see what things were in the background while other people were bringing up questions about things I wasn't really paying attention to such as what some of the people in the image were wearing. And I thought it was kind of cool to put into perspective what other people were looking at while I was kind of like looking somewhere else but all under the same image. Is this supposed to be satire? Why are the lighter characters sitting in the back? Why is there a character reading a book upside down that also appears to be simpler than the other books? At first glance, I was kind of disgusted because I see the different races, I could see how I'd represented and I really didn't like the depiction of these people that were put. But it really highlights the era of the time, it highlights the ideology that was going around the belief system that they had. And so doing the questions let us look deeper into this deeper than our feelings and have an actual sort of like scientific and audible gaze upon it. What is the gold ring on the second character's leg on the bench? One thing I really love about this part of the process is that there's no judgment. I'm writing down everything word for word. Felt like it was a safe and open environment. He mentions don't criticize questions, just keep asking questions. And I think that really helped me be comfortable. Even when there may be a misconception or a mistake that is within a question, I think for example, a student asked, why are they wearing satchels instead of the word sashes? You know, that's not a problem either. As a teacher, sometimes you find yourself correcting students all the time, like, oh, it's spelled this way or this is the correct thing. It is so nice to be able to just sit back and give them the steering wheel. And so that's a really wonderful part about it. Why are the kids in the front shown as terrified or afraid? What does the writing say on the books, the children in the back reading? All right, excellent everybody. Now we're gonna go through and categorize, right? Closed ended or open ended questions? Closed ended questions? Yes or no answers or a one word answer? Open ended questions? Are required an explanation? So number one, is that open or closed? Is that Uncle Sam? It's closed, yeah. Is the character face of the black? Characters on purpose? Closed. What is written on the book on the left side? Closed. Okay, why is there an indigenous man sitting in the back? Open. Open. Yeah, so we categorize the questions into open and closed questions. Now we're going to improve questions. We're going to be able to change them from close to open and open to closed. So pick anyone that you're curious, what's a number of a closed ended question and we can turn into an open ended question. What number that has a C next to it? What about one? Sure. We could say, I is Uncle Sam there. Okay, so from, is that Uncle Sam to, why is Uncle Sam there? Now number five, who's at the door? You could ask them why they are like excluded. Why excluded? And now let's do one open to closed. Or four instead of why we could put is there? Okay. As a historian who comes across this document, what would you prioritize in terms of the questions? Number 13. 21. Okay. I think 14, I think it's 20. Sorry, 20? Number 10. All right. Oh, 11. What are you noticing about where we chose to prioritize questions? We have more closed questions. Why do you think that is? I feel like some of the close ended questions that we chose provides us with like background. I could assume that the closed ended questions could have solid answers towards what they are and what the meaning of them are. It also helps with finding the historical context to know what's going on at that time. All right. Great. So Javier, what's your question? Why did you choose it? I chose number 21, doing part to the fact that it's asking what the topic has to do with imperialism and it's going to be the basis for what we will be looking into. Thank you. And Leslie, talk about why you chose this priority open ended question. I chose the why do they have sad shows of different countries because if we're trying to look up, trying to search our answer imperialism and what everyone had to do, I would like to know why there's different countries and how they affected American imperialism as a whole. Thank you. Great. I'm going to direct you to a few different sources. And the first thing we're going to do, there's a link to the original source with information about it. I'd like you to see if you can find information there that can answer some of our questions. And as you find those answers, if you could put them into our Google doc. I showed them the Library of Congress. They looked at the full cartoon along with information about it, like artists and date and publication and could see the text written out of what was in the cartoon. And I just said, go for it. And they started answering the questions sort of in real time on the same document. And that was fun to watch them just sort of work and go for it. And I like that they're able to see each other's work at the same time too, because it inspires them to keep working and also to read what each other is writing. And there you can also have discussions or as they're writing, I can question them and they can defend what they're writing or explain to others what it is. And we can think about the different questions. I have another source I'd like you to look at. It seems like you guys have done a great job looking at just this one primary source from a little wider perspective, right?  And I'm starting to hear the analysis happen. If you scroll down and just sort of look around and you'll find that this primary source is embedded in the secondary source. So it's like you're reading a textbook and this would come up. So there's gonna be a little more context about it. I had them read a secondary source about imperialism, but of course they're reading with a purpose because they generated these questions, which is one thing I really like about QFT. They have a question that they've created that they've thought about that they're, so whenever they read, they're going to be doing it with a very specific purpose in mind. It also states on secondary source, the blackboard says the consent of the government is a good thing in theory, but very rare in fact the US must govern its new territories with or without their consent until they can govern themselves. So in theory it's basically saying that these people are uncivilized, that they don't have a basic form of governance. So the United States has to go in and govern for them, which is basically justifying why they have a presence on those islands. It's like this white savior complex that they have extending to the idea of white mans bird and that these countries are unable to govern themselves. It's the US's duty to do so as if they are obligated. So using those two secondary sources, they ended up writing their claim evidence reasoning paragraph. I'd like to finish up with a quick discussion about the idea of continuity and change in American society. How is the American classroom that's been depicted here the same? What are continuities and then what are changes? First changes is that people are able to go to school and get that education with some continuities that there are still people out in the world who don't even have like the necessary means to get in an education. And it's not even like technically within their control. Like it's just not in their resources. Classrooms are more diverse than no one is treated better than others based on race or creed. What has continued is stereotypes in some forms racism still persists. It isn't as common as it is today compared to how it was a hundred years ago, but it still occurs. I kind of wanna disagree with what you said. Racism is still very prevalent. A lot of things are now illegal, but it's still very normal. And that's the reason why it doesn't seem as if it's uncommon because it's been normalized within our history now. The questioning process is totally enhances our learning just because the source of our curiosity of making these questions is entirely our own. We're not worried about if this is the question our teacher is trying to get us to ask or if this is the question like that they're kind of like looking forward that's gonna help move forth the lesson. It's more like these are the questions that I'm seeing that I'm thinking of. It helps me drive my learning by pushing more towards that curiosity and seeing like what's behind that. So like it's like a little like curtain and it's like, okay, my question is right there. Let me like go in and see what's more behind it and more like background information and then just our own information that we have ourselves put it in and just collide it to one big one. It definitely feels a lot more engaging with it because I'm actually speaking out rather than just hearing the teacher talk about it. And the teacher is still facilitating the discussion but it's mainly the students doing it compared to a normal lesson since we are talking it's a lot more easier to be engaged. It's kind of refreshing because it reverses that process that you typically see in the classroom where it's like students are typically given all this information and like they're supposed to digest that right away and then after the teacher asks like so does anybody have any questions after like you're still digesting all this information while this process kind of reverses that and you think for yourself first and get quality work at the end with a better result.