As Taiwan's first digital minister and cyber ambassador, civic technologist Audrey Tang pioneered open-source platforms that bring citizens directly into policymaking. In 2025, Tang received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the alternative Nobel, for advancing the social use of digital technology to strengthen democracy and heal divides. Now a Fellow of Oxford University's Institute for Ethics in AI, Tang is coauthor of the open project Plurality.net.
Why you should listen
As Taiwan's first digital minister and cyber ambassador, civic technologist Audrey Tang pioneered open-source platforms that bring citizens directly into policymaking. In 2025, Tang received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the alternative Nobel, for advancing the social use of digital technology to strengthen democracy and heal divides. Now a Fellow of Oxford University's Institute for Ethics in AI, Tang is coauthor of the open project Plurality.net.
Audrey Tang’s TED Talk
Audrey Tang, David Biello, Whitney Pennington Rodgers
How digital innovation can fight pandemics and strengthen democracy
48 minutes 55 secondsCan technology create a democracy that's fast, fair ... and even fun? Digital minister Audrey Tang shares how Taiwan avoided a COVID-19 shutdown in early 2020 through innovations like developing apps to map mask availability, crowdsourcing ideas that could become laws and creating a "humor over rumor" campaign to combat disinformation with comedy. (This virtual conversation, hosted by TED science curator David Biello and current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was recorded June 1, 2020.)Posted Jun 2020
