I’ve done activism for 15 years. I did a lot of activism around IT. My experience was, yeah, I could email people rather than write a letter. It was some help, but a campaign on issues was this part.

The irony was once you could email, everyone else could email. I remember all the representatives would say, "Now I get hundreds of thousands of emails. I don’t even read them anymore. [laughs] You have to come visit me to have me listen to you."

So the challenge I wrote here is I think open as participation in governance is hugely important. The role of tech, I think tech can have an impact here (open governance), but the impact here (open data) is big.

The other thing I’m trying to get as a story made into is that, for me, what I say about open world, I want a world in which all information is open. That means all movies, all music, all apps, all algorithms, all designs, etc.

The reason I’m particularly interested in that, is not specifically because I think of its impact on governance immediately. It would have an impact, because government information would be open, as well. We’d be able to see what we’re doing and may be able to hold them to account better.

Exactly, it’s a foundation. It’s a foundational stone, but it’s almost a joke ‑‑ Open Knowledge without open minds has little impact. The open minds part is very hard.

Right! However, you’ve got to get more of them interested in the open world.

Why do I want an open world? Not especially, and I’m not saying this, I don’t want this because of government.

It’s because this transforms the economy, and that has an impact on inequality.

It’s more than that. The information age has two big impacts. One is non‑rival goods. I’m going to use tech terminology, because you get it. The other is what I’d call platforms, otherwise known for many hundreds of years as marketplaces, but people now call them platforms.

Right, but it’s why all the debate about Uber... when I go to lots of countries, people go, "Uber’s so new and it’s so digital." It’s got nothing. It’s like a marketplace. It’s like the market in Lyon in 1250.

Yes, exactly, but these two things then combine with a choice. What then comes in is a big choice here. That choice is open versus closed.

This part already happens. The top part, this is just technology, if you like, or more the structure of the economy. The question is this choice.

I’ve drawn this diagram badly, but you’ve got the choice, plus the tech change. If you put them together, they give you two different worlds. I’ve drawn this diagram in Denmark a couple of months ago and did it better.

The point is, if we go the open route, we get innovation, we get freedom, etc. But we go the closed route ‑‑ and this is what’s important ‑‑ most people in government, in my experience of your colleagues, don’t get that the change of the information age, it isn’t about the fancy gizmos. It isn’t about the AI. It isn’t about virtual reality.

Right. That goes both ways. The problem with this is you take non‑rival and platforms and you combine them with closed, you get massive inequality.

It’s not like the old world. This is a world in which one person gets everything. As we said, we get monopoly, basically.

Right, but forget even surveillance. Just think about Uber, eBay, even Android if you like, Wikipedia. This is a world of where there’s one thing.

Right, but two effects there ‑‑ the network affects the platforms. The non‑rival good is the left‑hand side, which is the infinite economy of scale. One of the things is this choice.

Going back here, the point is that the open world, it isn’t so much about governance. It’s about if you transform the economy in this way, it’s kind of like if socialism with capitalism got together and had a child.

Yeah, capitalism and socialism had a baby. It’s like suddenly we’ve got the best of both worlds. We could have the innovation. We could have market‑based innovation, but we could have it all be open. The underlying good that we’re producing, the information, is fully open.

That’s why, also, this phrase I want to and share with you, if there’s one thing you take from this talk. We talked about brand. We had a very good concession that way, on "open," you get this.

I would offer to you, by the way, not to use the word "commons." I’m being provocative, but I’ve done loads of stuff. I did stuff from commons, as well.

The word "commons" is associated with physical commons, like fisheries or land or the atmosphere.

The thing is, the commons of land is a mirror image. If this were a mirror...

...of the commons of information. The thing is this is scarce, and it is overused. This is abundant and under produced.

We don’t need to worry about the technical term. Because when we’re talking about what world we want, often like what you were saying, you think like, "We wanted a commons."

Even earlier on you mentioned very commonly that many people don’t...They’ll even have events, like there’s one in Poland, the thing for the commons. Or like, we want digital commons.

I’m like, the commons, it brings all the wrong intellectual associated. I would say, just, we constantly say, "I want an open world."

That is the t‑shirt brand. We want an open world. Because we don’t get into the detail of the commons which also is controversial to people.

What the process is...

...which are shared narratives.

The source, I’m not so concerned there. The process is quite technical, so calling them commons wouldn’t matter so much.

You’d say, "What world do you want?" You might say, "I want a digital commons." Instead say, "I want an open world." I even start to use the word "open" systematically. I don’t even say, "Open source software." I say, "Open software."

Exactly. My point though is, what is the definition of open world?

This is what we as a community and a set of movement, an open movement, you need to be clear and get is, that across the world we could go anywhere and say, "What’s an open world?" I’d say, "What’s an open world?"

They’d say, "An open world is a world in which all public information is open, blah blah blah."

I have emailed you.

Yes, those I’ve dealt with.

Whisky Chang?

If you know anyone in particular in g0v, I’m particularly interested in people who are civil servants who might come. It’s invite‑only in the sense, it’s got limited space. I will run it. It’s highly interactive. It is about this stuff.

It’s on Saturday, 10:00 till 5:00. Here in Taipei. Write down the time.

10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. It’s open‑leaders.com.

There’s several people from the OCF, and several others. There’s a couple of entrepreneurs. There are some people from the NTU, National Taiwan University. There’s also at least one civil servant.

Could you mail them alternatively?

That would be amazing. Could you do that today by any chance? Because it’s getting close to...

It’s not going to be a public event. Many people must be in the policy, PhD candidate, deputy CEO of the Open Culture Foundation, which is obviously... OK. Thank you so much.

I’m here until next Wednesday. Next Tuesday, Wednesday. If tere’s anything you want to follow up on let me know. This has been very, a privilege to meet you.

Lovely.

No, I said governance.