Audrey Tang facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Audrey Tang
Tang Feng |
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唐鳳
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Official portrait, 2016
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| Taiwanese Ambassador-at-large | |
| Assumed office 7 October 2024 |
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| President | Lai Ching-te |
| 1st Minister of Digital Affairs | |
| In office 27 August 2022 – 20 May 2024 |
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| Prime Minister | Su Tseng-chang Chen Chien-jen |
| Deputy |
See list
Huai-Jen Lee
Chuei He-ming |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Huang Yen-nun |
| Minister without Portfolio | |
| In office 1 October 2016 – 27 August 2022 |
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| Prime Minister | Lin Chuan Lai Ching-te Su Tseng-chang |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Tang Tsung-han (唐宗漢)
18 April 1981 (age 44) Taipei, Taiwan |
| Political party | Independent |
| Parents |
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| Occupation | Politician |
| Profession | Software programmer |
| Signature | .svg) |
| Audrey Tang | |||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 唐鳳 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 唐凤 | ||||||||||||
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| Original name | |||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 唐宗漢 | ||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 唐宗汉 | ||||||||||||
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Audrey Tang (Chinese: 唐鳳; pinyin: Táng Fèng; born 18 April 1981) is a Taiwanese politician and computer programmer. She is known for her work with free software, which is software that people can use, change, and share freely. From August 2022 to May 2024, she was Taiwan's first Minister of Digital Affairs.
Audrey Tang is seen as one of Taiwan's top computing experts. In 2016, she became a minister without portfolio in Taiwan's government. This made her the first openly transgender and non-binary gender official in a top government role. Audrey has said she is "post-gender" and is fine with any pronouns people use for her online. She is also a key member of the Haskell and Perl programming language communities, and a core member of g0v, a group that uses technology to make government more open.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Audrey Tang was born in Taipei, Taiwan. Her parents are Tang Kuang-hua and Lee Ya-ching. Her mother helped create Taiwan's first consumer co-operative and an experimental school.
A Child Prodigy
Audrey was a very smart child. She was reading classic books before age five. She understood advanced math before age six. By age eight, she was already programming computers. She started learning the Perl programming language when she was 12. Audrey also spent some of her childhood living in Germany.
School and Self-Learning
Two years later, she left junior high school. She found it hard to fit into regular student life. By the time she was 19, in the year 2000, Audrey was already working for software companies. She even worked in California's famous Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur, which means she started her own businesses.
Personal Identity
In late 2005, Audrey began to live as a woman. She changed her English and Chinese names. She said this helped her feel more like herself. In 2017, she explained that she had lived mostly online for many years. This was because her brain knew she was a woman, but society expected something different. By 2019, Audrey described herself as "post-gender" or non-binary. She believes that how people describe her is less important than the experience itself.
IQ and Beliefs
News reports have said that Audrey Tang has a very high IQ of 180. She strongly believes in autodidacticism, which means learning things by yourself. She also supports anarchism, which is a belief in less government control and more freedom for individuals.
Helping with Free Software
Audrey Tang has made many important contributions to the world of free software.
Key Projects
- She started and led the Pugs project. This project brought together people from the Haskell and Perl programming communities. Their goal was to create the Perl 6 language.
- Audrey also helped make many free software programs work in different languages around the world. This is called internationalization and localization.
- She contributed a lot of code to SVK, which is a tool for managing changes in software.
- She helped with other programs like Request Tracker and Slash.
- Audrey created Ethercalc, a tool for online spreadsheets. She built on the work of Dan Bricklin and WikiCalc.
- She led efforts to translate many books about open source software into Traditional Chinese.
CPAN Contributions
Between 2001 and 2006, Audrey started over 100 Perl projects on CPAN. CPAN is a huge collection of Perl programs. One popular project she created is the Perl Archive Toolkit (PAR). This tool helps package and share Perl programs across different computer systems. She also set up systems for testing and digital signatures on CPAN. In 2005, she was a speaker at a big open source conference in Amsterdam.
Political Career
Audrey Tang became involved in politics during Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Student Movement. This was a time when students protested in the parliament building. Audrey volunteered to help them share their message with the public.
Joining the Government
After this, Taiwan's prime minister asked Audrey to help create lessons about media literacy for schools. These lessons teach students how to understand and evaluate information from different media sources. This program started in 2017.
In August 2016, Audrey was appointed minister without portfolio for digital affairs. She officially started this role on October 1. Her job was to help government agencies communicate their goals using digital tools. She also managed information published by the government online. At 35, Audrey was the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwan's history. She was given this role to help connect older and younger generations.
Working Style and Goals
Audrey Tang believes in preserving free public spaces, especially online. She wants technology to benefit everyone, not just a few people. Her department works differently from traditional government offices. Her staff of 15 choose to work with her. They work together as a team, not by following strict orders. Audrey once said her role was to be a "channel" to bring together different ideas and strengths.
Digital Initiatives
- g0v project: This was Audrey's first big project. It involved changing the "o" in "gov.tw" (government websites) to a "0". This created new, more user-friendly versions of government websites. The project was open source, meaning anyone could use and improve it. It became very popular, with millions of visits each month.
- vTaiwan: This initiative uses social media ideas to let citizens create digital petitions. If a petition gets 5,000 signatures, it is brought to the prime minister and government ministries. This system has led to real changes, like making income tax software available for non-Windows computers. It also helped change rules about cancer treatment.
- Sharing Economy: In 2017, Audrey was working on software for the sharing economy. This software would help people freely exchange resources they have in abundance. This is different from typical ride-sharing or hotel apps.
Radical Transparency
Audrey Tang practices "radical transparency". This means all her meetings are recorded, written down, and put on a public website. She also answers questions sent to her through another public website.
Recent Activities
In 2022, Audrey hosted a video podcast called "Innovative Minds with Audrey Tang." This was with TaiwanPlus, an international streaming service. She interviewed famous people like Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube) and Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum). In January 2023, Audrey became an e-resident of Lithuania. This was announced during her first foreign visit as Digital Affairs minister.
In May 2024, Audrey Tang was replaced as Minister of Digital Affairs by Huang Yen-nun. In October 2024, she was named one of Taiwan's ten new ambassadors-at-large.
See also
In Spanish: Audrey Tang para niños
- Anarchism in Taiwan
