Would you like to begin to introduce yourself, by sharing with us your first time visiting in Paris?
When I was very young, when I was 11, I lived in Saarland, and it’s very close to French borders. Actually, in our schools we taught German, and then French, and then English, in that order. So I traveled with my parents through Luxembourg to Paris, to these nearby regions; we see a lot of different cultures intermingling each other.
In ’87 is decided to create a triple liaison connection. The first one in Japan. There was one in Paris and one in the States. I think it was in New York. So, there was a connection. Our student from Japan sent a picture that took a very long time to arrive. It was a picture that want take time to download.
20-30 years before it happened. It didn’t take that much time. Here we are in 2015, listening to what was the first time we saw the connection of those two computers. Do you remember, Audrey, the first time when you see the two computers get together and connect around the world?
Certainly. When I was in Germany, I already practiced computer programming. But at that time, the way for computers to talk to each other was limited to the academia, to universities, the early pioneers of the Internet.
You were a girl, a teenager — did your parents and understood that you were doing and understand the progress from one year from the other? They’ve seen the revolution going on, your parents?
Yes, actually the Beijing protest in 1989 was the first year of a color camera was paired with satellite connections and photofax machines, so people can get colored footage out. Because back then, people thought that photos had to be in films.
You say that you had understand that at that point?
Yes.
The informatic code is the law. It’s been too hard to talk about it, and citizens don’t usually talk about it. But it’s important that, though cyberspace is called unreal, it’s very real now. We need to put this under the control of civil powers, and not in the hand of a few actors who won’t be as goodwilling or full of goodness as we are.
The person from the universities in France mentioned that the code is law. It reminded me very much of everything about your teenage years.
Well when Lawrence Lessig, the law professor and the creator of the Creative Commons movement — where authors relinquish part of our copyright so that we can work with the world on creations together — when he coined the idea that code is law, he doesn’t literally mean law as in courtroom, or for judges, or the jurisdiction.
You have been sharing this code, and to give it to everybody — all the citizens — so they can become their own architects. When do you realize the importance of this idea ?
When I was 12, I decided that I don’t want to be schooled anymore in the school system. I started to leave the school system when I was 13, and when I was 14 I discovered the Web. But before when I was 14, there were two years where I had access to the Internet and when I’m not satisfied with the education system. So I discovered this Gutenberg Project on the Internet.
And then you gave all your knowledge of the code to other people. How did you make that accessible?
On the Internet, by default — that means without doing anything — any computer can talk to any computer. When somebody has a better idea, they don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. They can just make it happen on their computer. When a nearby computer sees it and wants to adopt the same protocol, again, they don’t have to ask for anybody’s permission.
Along the street were some houses and stores. They used to live here and do business, or it was their family. You can see the barriers over there, the green barrier. Inside this land is going to be sold to big companies or hotels that may do a financial center or a tourist industry here.
(Music "Because" from Fan Xiao-Xuan)
That’s the music you choose? No?
No, the one I chose was “Lux Aurumque”.
You’re very nice. You’re explaining very clearly. [laughs] I was so scared of everything.
Well I’m a professional mediator. It’s my job to talk like this. [laughs]
And you do it perfectly.
This is very nostalgic Taiwanese pop music.
Yeah, you like it?
Yeah, it’s nostalgic.
Had you imagined your idea would take that long to get into all the houses and stuff like that in Taiwan? I thought it would have taken much more time. One year, one year, one year just seems like...
Yeah, it’s very, very fast. I think that’s because Taiwan was the main manufacturing place of personal computers at that time. All those personal computers were made in Taiwan.
Yeah, because I don’t have the feeling it was like that in France.
(music over)
For people outside Taiwan, how would you explain the revolution of Sunflower movement to them ?
This music you just played, it’s pretty nice to hear that. It describes this idea that when people are in love, they could just idle there, do nothing, but they still feel like they’re in love. The are content with their life, with a satisfaction in harmony with the environment.
When you say "we," you mean the technical team to work on Internet connectivity during these days?
Yes. When I say “we,” I mean the Gov Zero, the g0v. We are a movement, just like the Internet, that anybody can join. The only requirement is that you must allow other people to reuse your work. That’s it. Anybody can start any project. The translation, the transcripting, the logistics, the video live streaming, everything was done by volunteers using our own space for coordination.
The word “neutrality” is something very new, and it was not an issue in the origins of Internet. It was the normal result of the architecture that’s been created on Internet. It’s agnostic to the way you use it. From this original point of view, you had the freedom to create.
About the occupation of 22 days in Taiwan, you emphasized on Internet neutrality. How would you explain that?
Certainly. The term Internet neutrality means three very important things, and they intertwine with each other. First, it means that anybody can talk to anybody. There’s no discrimination based on who you are. Second, it means that when anybody sends a message, it is carried verbatim — that is to say without alteration — to its intended recipient. It means that no tampering with the message.
Would you use the same tools to put online everything from anyone, any part, any ideas they have, give all their content? Would the people in Taiwan have done this for their government, even for an administration that you didn’t agree with?
I said the three virtues were: end-to-end, anybody-to-anybody; freedom from tampering and from censorship; and freedom to invent new uses. These all pertain to things that we voluntarily put on the Internet. The Internet is a way to talk to each other.
Yes, we can come back to the legal definition. It’s like the definition of a lawmaker, so I will trust it, because you know what it is. [laughs]
The word "hacker," when it was first used in the 17th century, it means people who hack on the wood and to make tools using wood. They also make their own woodworking tools, and most of the woodworking tools and the furniture at that time were made of wood themselves.
I noticed that when you introduced yourself, that you were retired?
Mm-hmm.
You’re not very old. Why do you call yourself retired?
Well, I did work professionally for 20 years. When I say I retired, I mean that my time is spent primarily in the third sector. That means I work with people who volunteer, who work with me, who can join or leave at any time.
When you were working for 20 years, did that give you enough money to live without being a problem for you?
It is true that I work with some Silicon Valley companies and as an entrepreneur, but I’m not particularly rich. It’s just that I decided that my skills or my time is valued enough so that people are willing to let me live, somewhat comfortably perhaps, in exchange of my time.
But your knowledge may also enable big groups in the private sector. For instance, would you work with Facebook, or with Google?
The thing with open source, with giving my copyright away, is that I cannot control who use it. For example, I invented a way of making a spreadsheet faster over the Web. But when I was working on it, first I’m working on somebody else’s prior work. Second, I cannot control who will be the next person using my work.
(Music: "Lux Aurumque" from Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir)
We are listening to the first Virtual Choir, curated by Eric Whitacre, the composer of this music, with 185 singers from 12 countries. These people did the recordings at their homes, wearing headphones, some people singing some parts, some singing other parts, and they were singing by looking at the conductor-composer himself in a silent film, who conducts everybody’s singing in an asynchronous way.
So it is a grand movement, involving each and every participants, on the internet. Do you think this kind of collaboration gives us hope for the future?
I have a lot of hope, because I was also a conductor of this type of work, but with the government and the private sector. When Uber comes to Taiwan, they did not ask for anybody’s permission.
(Music playing)
So at the end, what was the decision about Uber?
The consensus was that they had to pay taxes, they had to display prominently their registration, and that they had to provide the insurance statements. We also compared these concerns with other countries, who had similar contentions not only with Uber, but also with Airbnb.
So Uber can also become a dispatch system for existing taxis?
Yes, that’s how it works in London.
Yeah, you have the mini cab and the black cab there.
Exactly.
At which time will you have the meeting of the night of ideas?
At midnight, with Blaise from Google.
(Music: "Bird on a wire", from Rosemary Standley and Dom de la Nena)
Thank you so much for spending the time with us. We look forward seeing you tonight at the Nuit des Idées.