The "Nobody" Movement: Inside Taiwan's Digital Democracy

This presentation will introduce a Taiwan-based civic tech community, g0v (pronounced “gov-zero”) and how its “nobody” philosophy mobilizes thousands of civic hackers in the movement towards a digital democracy. In recent years, Taiwan has been praised as a strong, vibrant democracy when other democratic countries are suffering from the rise of populism and extremism. While most of the media coverage focuses on the Taiwanese government’s innovative changes after the inauguration of the digital minister Audrey Tang, I want to show that this vibrant democracy is actually built up by the grass-roots movements from the civil society. Among them, g0v, one of the world’s biggest civic tech communities, has had significant cultural impact and political influence since its foundation in 2012. Its “nobody” philosophy—“Don’t ask why nobody is doing this. Admit you are the NOBODY”—has attracted active citizens from all walks of life, including the famous Audrey, to join hacking for an open government. Over the years, they have built projects to push government transparency (e.g. Open Campaign Finance), to promote civic engagement (e.g. vTaiwan), and to fight misinformation (e.g. Cofacts), to name just a few. This presentation will discuss this “nobody” movement, its genesis, achievements, ramifications, and why we should pay attention.

SPEAKERS Mei-chun is an anthropologist who studies digital activism and network politics. She is an active participant of g0v, a Taiwan-based civic tech community, and has served in the program committee of the g0v summit 2018. She holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and is finishing up her PhD degree at UC Davis. She is also the co-authored of Taiwan Open Government Report 2014-2016, and a former writer of g0v.news.

Avital Balwit studies political and social thought and cognitive science at the University of Virginia. She wrote her capstone thesis on regulatory questions concerning the Big Five technology companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft) in the areas of privacy, antitrust, and taxation. She also writes short stories, personal essays, and poetry. She has work published in Kanstellation, and New Reader Magazine, and forthcoming in World Weaver Press. She won the Atlantic’s 2020 poetry contest.