As the ‘civic hacker’ who became Taiwan’s first transgender cabinet minister, she is used to breaking boundaries. What can the rest of the world learn from her vision of a happy and inclusive web? Audrey Tang didn’t have the easiest of starts in life. The Taiwanese hacker turned government minister was told at the age of four that she had a 50-50 chance of dying unless she had a major operation to fix a hole in her heart. Her doctor told her she could drop down dead at any moment if she got overexcited – and she had to wait eight more years for the op. This kind of news might bring out someone’s selfish side – if your life is going to be so truncated, live for yourself. Not Tang, though. She was a tiny child with a whopping IQ and a precocious capacity to think. She decided she wanted to learn everything she could and share it with the world. At five, living with her family in Taipei, she started reading prodigiously – mainly classical Chinese literature. Huge tomes. Then she’d recount her own version of the stories to her classmates. “I liked storytelling. When I was seven I’d speak to the entire school about stories I’d learned from a book and retell them in a way I found more interesting.” Did she realise she was super bright back then? She shakes her head. “No, I realised I was super ill.” By six Tang was studying advanced mathematics; at eight she started writing code for video games, using pencil and paper because she didn’t yet own a computer. And whatever she learned, it was with the intention of sharing her knowledge. Before long it became apparent she was a digital genius. Tang, 43, is roughly the same age as the internet (1 January 1983 is considered its birthday). She grew up alongside the world wide web; it was her playmate. In her teens, Tang believed the internet was there to bring her vision to fruition: to democratise knowledge, to make everything accessible, to make the world a better place. But then she saw it changing, being used to spread falsehoods and generate all-powerful companies that made digital capitalism’s founding fathers unfeasibly rich while creating unimagined levels of inequality. Continue reading...

Trump has accused Taiwan of ‘taking’ the US chip sector, but Taipei has been at the forefront of the industry for decades, and its future could depend on it The Hsinchu Science Park, on Taiwan’s west coast, is lush and green, with streets neatly planned and clearly signposted. The buildings are modern and well maintained – from the outside most visitors wouldn’t even know that they are among the world’s most important factories. Hsinchu used to be famous for its fishball street snacks, but now it’s referred to as Taiwan’s Silicon Valley, a tech-focused microcosm pipelining workers from school to university and into the world-leading semiconductor industry that is crucial to global supply chains. Continue reading...