Audrey Tang

Audrey Tang (born 18 April 1981; formerly known as Autrijus Tang, Chinese: 唐宗漢 Táng Zōnghàn) is a Taiwanese free software programmer and Taiwan's Digital Minister, who has been described as one of the "ten greats of Taiwanese computing personalities".[1] In August 2016, they were invited to join the Taiwan Executive Yuan as a minister without portfolio, making them the first transgender, non-binary official in the top executive cabinet.[2][3][4] Tang has identified as "post-gender" and accepts "whatever pronoun people want to describe [them] with online."[5]

Audrey Tang
唐鳳
Minister without Portfolio
Assumed office
1 October 2016
PremierLin Chuan
William Lai
Su Tseng-chang
Personal details
Born18 April 1981 (1981-04-18) (age 39)
NationalityTaiwanese
Political partyIndependent
Audrey Tang
Traditional Chinese唐鳳
Simplified Chinese唐凤

Biography

Tang's parents are Tang Kuang-hua and Lee Ya-ching.[6] Tang was a child prodigy reading works of classical literature before the age of five, advanced mathematics before six, and programming before 8,[7] and they began to learn Perl at age 12.[8] Two years later, they dropped out of high school, unable to adapt to student life.[1] By the year 2000, at the age of 19, Tang had already held positions in software companies, and worked in California's Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur.[8]

In late 2005, Tang began transitioning to female, including changing their English and Chinese names, citing a need to reconcile their outward appearance with their self-image.[9] In 2017, Tang said, "I've been shutting reality off and lived almost exclusively on the net for many years, because my brain knows for sure that I am a woman, but the social expectations demand otherwise".[10] In 2019, Tang has identified as "post-gender" or non-binary, responding to a request for their pronouns with: "What’s important here is not which pronouns you use, but the experience...about those pronouns.... I’m not just non-binary. I’m really whatever, so do whatever."[3][4]

The television news channel ETToday reported that they have an IQ of 180.[1] They have been a vocal proponent for autodidacticism[11] and individualist anarchism.[8]

Free software contributions

Tang initiated and led the Pugs project, a joint effort from the Haskell and Perl communities to implement the Perl 6 language;[12] they have also made contributions to internationalization and localization efforts for several Free Software programs, including SVK (a version-control software written in Perl for which they also wrote a large portion of the code), Request Tracker, and Slash, created Ethercalc[13] building on Dan Bricklin's work on WikiCalc and their work together on SocialCalc, as well as heading Traditional Chinese translation efforts for various open source-related books.[1][8]

On CPAN, Tang initiated over 100 Perl projects between June 2001 and July 2006, including the popular Perl Archive Toolkit (PAR), a cross-platform packaging and deployment tool for Perl 5.[14] They are also responsible for setting up smoke test and digital signature systems for CPAN.[15] In October 2005, they were a speaker at O'Reilly Media's European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam.[16]

Political career

Tang was named a minister without portfolio in the Lin Chuan cabinet in August 2016. They took office as the "Digital Minister" on October 1, and were placed in charge of helping government agencies communicate policy goals and managing information published by the government, both via digital means.[17][18] Tang was quoted saying, "My existence is not to become a minister for a certain group, nor to broadcast government propaganda. Instead, it is to become a "channel" to allow greater combinations of intelligence and strength to come together."[19] Tang was given this role in the Taiwanese cabinet, as a minister without portfolio, to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations.[20] Tang is currently working on the development of free software, for the public to access, to show that the new Taiwanese sharing economy, is in fact a working system.[21] At age 35, Tang became the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history.[22]

References
  1. Chen, Chun-ming (2006-02-08). "別叫我「先生」！　電腦怪傑唐宗漢變性　改名唐鳳 (Don't call me "Mister"! Tang Zonghan changes sex, name now Tang Feng)" (in Chinese). Eastern Television. Archived from the original on 2006-10-19. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
  2. "PROFILE: Audrey Tang: 100% made in Taiwan - Taipei Times". www.taipeitimes.com. 2016-08-28. Retrieved 2016-08-29.
  3. Glauert, Rik (2018-11-29). "What you didn't know about the world's first non-binary minister". Gay Star News. Retrieved 2020-07-28.
  4. "Interview with Mia Hunt".
  5. "Audrey Tang is radically transparent". Dumbo Feather. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  6. Chung, Jake (28 August 2016). "PROFILE: Audrey Tang: 100% made in Taiwan". Taipei Times. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
  7. TING-FANG, CHENG; LI, LAULY; IHARA, KENSAKU. "Taiwan digital minister warns of China's 5G 'Trojan horse'". asia.nikkei.com. Nikkei. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  8. Li, Hsin-ru (2000-06-28). "專題報導 : 尋找台灣自由軟體力量 (Special Report: Searching for the power of Taiwanese free software)". CNet Taiwan). Archived from the original on 2006-08-31. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
  9. "Audrey Tang's Blog: Runtime Typecasting". December 2005. Archived from the original on 1 July 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-04.
  10. Audrey, "鳳" "Phoenix", 1 February 2017
  11. Chen, Bo-nian (2000-06-28). "平淡中見絢爤-李雅卿的教改之路 (Lee Ya-Ching's road toward educational reform)". Epoch Taiwan). Archived from the original on 2004-01-15. Retrieved 2007-04-16.
  12. "A Plan for Pugs". O'Reilly Media. 2005-03-03. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
  13. "Ethercalc.net".
  14. "Author page for autrijus". CPAN. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
  15. "Becoming a CPAN Tester with CPANPLUS". O'Reilly Media. 2002-04-30. Retrieved 2011-01-27.
  16. "Perl Internationalization and Haskell: an interview with Autrijus Tang". O'Reilly Media. 2005-09-08. Archived from the original on 31 March 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-23.
  17. Lin, Milly; Tai, Ya-chen; Huang, Chiao-wen; Chang, S.C. (25 August 2016). "Young minister a bold attempt to solve government problems". Central News Agency. Retrieved 25 August 2016.
  18. Hsiao, Alison (26 August 2016). "Programming expert to join Executive Yuan". Taipei Times. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  19. The China Post News staff, ″Cabinet to appoint minister to steer open gov't initiative″, "The China Post″, Retrieved 1 February 2017
  20. James Wang, ″Generation Gap a factor for Blue and Green Camps″, ″Taipei Times″, 1 February 2017
  21. Jake Chung, ″PROFILE: Audrey Tang: 100% made in Taiwan", ″Taipei Times", 1 February 2017
  22. Lin, Luang-sen; Chung, Jake (2 February 2017). "Wellington Koo and wife, Audrey Tang report assets". Taipei Times. Retrieved 2 February 2017.

Publications
  • Aker, Brian; Krieger, David; Wei-hung, Chen; Chih-jung, Chang; Chun-ying, Huang; Chih-pin, Lin; Ke-huan, Lin; Kang-min, Liu; Chung-han, Tang; Chien-ting, Weng (translators) (November 2003). 架設 Slash 社群網站 (Running Weblogs with Slash) (in Chinese). Taipei, Taiwan: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-986-7794-22-2.

Further reading
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.