Audrey Tang

Tang was born in Taipei. Her father, Tang Kuang-hua, and mother, Lee Ya-ching, were both writers at the China Times. When she was four, she was diagnosed with a heart condition that had a 50% survival rate.'''''' Lee Ya-ching helped develop Taiwan's first consumer co-operative, and co-developed an experimental primary school employing indigenous teachers. Tang was a child prodigy, reading works of classical literature before the age of five, advanced mathematics before six, and programming before eight. Initially, she coded in pencil and paper because she didn't have a computer. Tang spent part of her childhood in Germany. Two years later, she dropped out of junior high school, unable to adapt to student life. In 2017, Tang said, "I've been shutting reality off, and lived almost exclusively on the net for many years, because my brain knows for sure that I am a woman, but the social expectations demand otherwise." In 2019, Tang identified as "post-gender" or non-binary, responding to a request regarding pronoun preferences with "What's important here is not which pronouns you use, but the experience...about those pronouns... I'm not just non-binary. I'm really whatever, so do whatever." and anarchism. ==Free software contributions==

Tang initiated and led the Pugs project, a joint effort from the Haskell and Perl programming language communities to implement the Perl 6 language; Tang also made contributions to internationalization and localization efforts for several free software projects, including SVK (a version-control software written in Perl for which Tang also wrote a large portion of the code), Request Tracker, and Slash, created Ethercalc, building on Dan Bricklin's work on WikiCalc and their work together on SocialCalc, as well as heading Traditional Chinese translation efforts for various open source-related books. Tang is also responsible for setting up smoke test and digital signature systems for CPAN. In October 2005, Tang was a speaker at O'Reilly Media's European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam. ==Career==

Tang became involved in politics during Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Student Movement demonstrations, in which Tang volunteered to help the protesters occupying the Taiwanese parliament building broadcast their message. The prime minister invited Tang to build media literacy curricula for Taiwan's schools, which was implemented in late 2017. Following this work, Tang was appointed minister without portfolio for digital affairs in the Lin Chuan cabinet in August 2016, and took office as the digital minister on October 1, being placed in charge of helping government agencies communicate policy goals and managing information published by the government, both via digital means. At age 35, Tang was the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history and was given this role to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations.As a conservative anarchist, Tang ultimately desires the abolition of Taiwan and all states, and justifies working for the state by the opportunity it affords to promote worthwhile ends. Tang's conservatism stems from wanting to preserve free public spaces independent from the state, such as Internet properties, and wanting technological advances to be applied humanistically so that all can reap its benefits, rather than a few to the exclusion of others. Tang's department does not follow hierarchical or bureaucratic relationships. As of 2017, Tang's staff of 15 chose to work in the department. The group produces a weekly roadmap as collaborators, not orders. Tang was quoted as saying, "My existence is not to become a minister for a certain group, nor to broadcast government propaganda. Instead, it is to become a 'channel' to allow greater combinations of intelligence and strength to come together." To help counter the COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan, she used digital tools to call on the collective wisdom of its people based on three principles: "fast, fair, fun." She also created a strategy called "humour over rumour" which responded to misinformation within 20 minutes in 200 words or fewer, alongside two fun images. The implementation of her philosophies for open source into government resulted in a well-executed response to COVID-19, resisting both misinformation and the need for Taiwan to enter a full lockdown.''' Guests on the program include Steve Chen, Vitalik Buterin, Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Sandra Oudkirk. In January 2023 Tang became an e-resident of Lithuania which was announced during her first foreign visit as Digital Affairs minister in Vilnius, Lithuania. Tang also became the chairperson of Taiwan's National Institute of Cyber Security board. In October 2024, Tang was named one of ten new ambassadors-at-large. In this function, she is currently serving on the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the University of Oxford in the UK, "addressing digital democracy and the concept of Plurality in collaborative governance." Audrey believes that bridging-based algorithms would make social media a force for amplifying common ground instead of division. == Publications ==

• ⿻ 數位 Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy (Independently published, Apr 16, 2024, ), written with Glen Weyl and ⿻ Community • • ==Awards==

• Right Livelihood Award (2025) == See also ==