Tokyo College Seminar on ”Plurality: the Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy”

May 12 Tokyo College Seminar on "Plurality: the Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy"

Cast: Audrey Tan, Glenn Weil, Takeo Hoshi, Takehito Kojima, Ken Suzuki, and others

Date and Time: May 12, 2025, 3:00 p.m. - 4:40 p.m.

Place: Fukutake Hall, Hongo Campus, The University of Tokyo

Format: Researchers only by full invitation, free of charge, archived distribution available, English only

Organized by Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo

The event began with opening remarks by Ken Sun (Project Researcher at the University of Tokyo, founder of "Democracy 2030" and founder of the "M" app). He introduced the background of the conference as the publication of the Japanese edition of the book** "Plurality" co-authored by Taiwan's Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tan and economist Glenn Weil. Ken Sun himself has written a commentary on this Japanese edition, and he took the stage to introduce the concept of Plurality.

Regarding the concept of Plurality, Ken Sun explained that it comes from Hannah Arendt's idea in "The Human Condition" that people are equal in the sense that they are different, which brings about political reality. He emphasized that Plurality is a technology for cooperation across social differences and not an abstract concept.

As a key point in the book, he presented a chart showing the tradeoff between Breadth of Diversity and Depth of Collaboration. He stated that the core concept of Plurality is that technology can be used to further extend this production possibility frontier** in the case of shallow collaboration with many people (bottom right) and deep collaboration with a small number of people (top left), as in a monetary system.

He also mentioned two leading ideas about technology: Synthetic Technocracy (represented by OpenAI, etc.) and Cooperative Techno-Libertarianism (represented by Bitcoin, Web3, etc.). and Web3), and explained that Plurality is trying to establish a third way in this context. Ken Sun expressed the view that in the Japanese context, synthetic technocracy could be transformed into techno-autocracy (represented by neighboring powers), and that techno-libertarianism corresponds to the current U.S. tech giants.

The next speaker was Glenn Weil. He noted that times are changing and that many of the certainties of the era in which he grew up are coming to an end in terms of international relations, views on democracy, and relationships with technology. He noted that technology is increasingly seen as a threat in the West. He criticized the dominant ideology of techno-libertarianism, which preaches that "blockchain frees us from the need for mutual care, cooperation, and government," and synthetic technocracy, which preaches that "machines do it all."

Plurality used the example of Taiwan's digital democracy to show how a civic hacker movement (GovZero) helped improve government digital services and build the digital infrastructure to achieve world-class results in fighting the novel coronavirus. In Taiwan, consensus building on controversial issues (marriage equality, Uber, etc.) was achieved using tools that cut across social divisions, and not only biological but also informational infections (disinformation) achieved despite a diverse and complex society, where differences flare up in conflict He stated that the Plurality concept shows that by building the right engines, that energy can be harnessed for growth and development, rather than exploding into a

Mr. Glenn gave the following examples of specific mechanisms of Plurality: - A "Plurality" is a group of people who are given the opportunity to work with a group of people who have been given the opportunity to work together.

Pro-social media: provides social context for users by labeling online content with labels indicating its acceptance within a community, as determined by an algorithm, to promote consensus building across divides. It is funded through a business model that charges social communities for higher rankings of agreed-upon content in their member feeds.

Digital Democracy Platform: a platform that leverages Taiwanese tools to allow citizens to raise important issues (e.g., Engaged California).

Quadratic Voting: a voting system that allows for a statement of importance. Used in Colorado and Taiwan for budget allocation.

Quadratic Funding: a system in which individual contributions to a project are funded from a matching pool based on the diversity of those who contributed. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been distributed.

Digital Public Infrastructure: governments to fund the development of open source digital infrastructure by the citizen sector to become the default in public sector applications (e.g. IndiaStack). This will broaden access to payments, ID systems, and e-commerce systems and avoid platform monopolies.

Partial Common Property Systems: A system in which ownership is not absolute and tax is paid based on self-assessed value, and the taxpayer agrees to sell at that value. It promotes economic use of the property while creating a sharing of rights.

Glenn said he believes Japan is the most prepared place in the world for these ideas to become mainstream and help make Japan a world leader. Cultural institutions such as the Future Design Councils, Citizens' Assemblies, AI augmented broad listening Miraikan, **Team Labs, and others, as well as the Japan's potential was highly praised, citing a dynamic private sector (Sushi Tech, Startup Shibuya, Smart News, Cybers Sakana, etc.) that promotes new digital technology development models that serve the public good.

Here, a short film (trailer) by Audrey Tan was shown. The film touched on the world situation where democracy is in decline and authoritarianism is on the rise, showing that the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan can evolve democracy and that democracy should be seen as a "social technology" that allows people to build and improve political systems together. He also spoke about his own experience with a heart defect. He also warned that, based on his own experience with a heart defect, he is aware that everything is resettable and that we can easily lose our democracy. He introduced Taiwan as a place where, unlike the United States, which runs on an old operating system (250 years old), we can rethink what democracy should look like in the 21st century, and that by making the government public and providing easy access to data, Taiwan has become the most exciting constitutional democracy in the world.

After the screening, Audrey Tan gave a short message to the audience. He emphasized that "society and its enemies" and "indifference" are the enemies of Plurality and the digital democracy project. He concluded by saying that if indifference is the enemy, then difference is our ally, and that these technologies are for celebrating difference, nurturing difference, and leveraging difference for better co-creation.

From here, the session moved to a question-and-answer session, beginning with a question to Audrey Tan.

Balancing Transparency and Privacy Protection: While acknowledging the importance of transparency in the Plurality philosophy, the questioner (Prof. Kojima) pointed out the difficulty of balancing transparency with privacy protection, and asked how the success of information sharing in Taiwan in fighting the novel coronavirus (especially in mask and vaccine distribution) has asked how the success of information sharing in Taiwan's response to the new coronavirus (especially in mask and vaccine distribution) overcame privacy concerns.

Audrey Tan responded technically, explaining that Taiwan's contact tracking system was based on scanning a QR code at the venue or sending an SMS with a 15-digit number. He stated that this system avoided the trade-off between privacy and public health by having the following three characteristics

1. the venue does not learn anything: it only indicates that you have texted 1922 and no phone numbers, etc. are known.

2. carriers get no new information: they don't know what a random number corresponds to and already have rough location information.

3. the state learns nothing: unless there is an outbreak in the region, the state cannot see the data. This was emphasized as important in that it only needed to be amplified as multi-party storage zero knowledge proof civil society (activists such as GovZero) "civic infrastructure".

Diversity and Harmony in Japanese Culture: Another questioner (Prof. Emma) felt that while Plurality preached the importance of diversity, Japanese culture tended to emphasize harmony and sameness, and asked how this Japanese culture was viewed and how to strike a balance between diversity and harmony. He asked the following questions.

Audrey Tan explained that pro-social media efforts are not about eliminating or censoring extreme views, but about making visible the "uncommon ground" or "rarely discovered middle ground. The goal is not to eliminate or censor opinions, but to visualize "uncommon ground" and "rarely discovered middle ground. Algorithms can provide "upwing" perspectives that are supported by both left and right, and show that polarized views are not in fact dominant, thereby promoting bridging and giving "bridging bonuses" to those who favor those who connect different communities. He stated that Taiwan has introduced a system that favors people who connect different communities by giving them a "bridging bonus" by showing that polarized views are not actually dominant. He stated that Taiwan has used this "cross-sectoral divide" and bridging bonus concept to significantly increase the level of public trust in controversial social issues such as marriage equality and Uber.

Digitization, Mode of Production, and Economic Disparity: Another questioner pointed out that Plurality's promotion of digitization risks widening the economic gap between countries that can produce digital products and those that produce raw materials, and asked how a digitized democracy would confront this mode-of-production issue. He asked how digitalized democracies would deal with this issue of mode of production.

Audrey Tan stated that in Taiwan, digital infrastructure is seen as part of the socialist core. She explained that broadband, like universal health care and universal education, is defined as a human right and is considered something that should be placed outside the capitalist market. He stated that in areas where there is no Internet access, there is a mechanism whereby the government forces telecommunications carriers to provide universal service and reimburses other carriers for their losses. This is an approach that regulates digital technology very strictly as Utilities, rather than leaving it to market forces, and he argued that social media should be included in this. He said that by requiring interoperability in social media, as in utilities, so that people can switch providers and still carry their phone numbers with them, it would prevent monopolization by large companies and create an environment where non-profits and small players could enter and compete in the marketplace. This is a solution to the problem of all modes of production. He said this would not solve the problem of all modes of production, but it would be a valid starting point for essential services.

Isolation due to remote work and digitization: one audience member expressed concern about people becoming increasingly remote and isolated due to digitization, such as remote work during pandemics and ways of working with little physical contact, and whether this should be seen as "fear" or "liberation", He asked how we think about this in terms of Plurality.

Audrey Tan said that the pandemic was an extreme example, and that many workplaces are moving to a hybrid model, explaining that tools like Zoom are good for converging, but not for diverging, and that the latter requires an "ambient awareness system" to understand what is going on around you, which is easier to do face-to-face. The latter requires an "ambient awareness system," which is easier to achieve face-to-face. He noted that many companies are finding that a mix of in-person and remote work leads to a better work environment, and explained that Plurality's approach sees this not as a dilemma, but as a "productivity frontier," where small groups of people can work in-depth and remotely. In other words, he said that the trade-off between going deep with a few people or shallow with many people is that technology can help "make shallow technology a little deeper" or "deep technology a little more inclusive "**. **He said that augmented collective intelligence lies in the ability to move fluidly and flexibly between modalities, not just one mode or the other.

At this point, time ran out and the question and answer session with Audrey Tan ended.

Roundtable sessions followed. The session was titled "The Political Economy of Technology and Inclusion," but a free-flowing discussion that went beyond this was expected. The panelists were introduced as the moderator, Professor Naoko Shimazu (Vice President, Tokyo College; historian), Glenn Weil, Professor Sho Kojima (Department of Economics, University of Tokyo; Tokyo College; market design, matching theory, and game theory), and Associate Professor Yusa Ema (Tokyo College; UT Future Vision Institute; AI and Society, Science and Technology Theory). The event began with a presentation by Prof. Kojima and Associate Prof. Ema. The format was shown with Prof. Kojima and Associate Prof. Ema first commenting on Plurality's ideas, followed by Glenn's comments and an open Q&A session.

Professor Kojima provided the first comments. He described his specialty, Market Design, as a field that uses mathematical techniques such as game theory to design social institutions (market and non-market). He noted that Glenn has been a major player in the market design field in the past, for example in product voting. However, he said he was a bit nervous about his own activities, as he felt that Glenn had moved away from the market design paradigm and now viewed trying to influence policy as a "technocratic way of doing things.

Professor Kojima cited as an example the proposals for reform of Japan's public high school entrance examinations that his laboratory is working on. In response to the current "only one school can apply" system, which creates a great deal of stress and inefficiency for students, he introduced a proposal to introduce a "matching system" in which students submit their preferences and a computer tallies the results. He stated that this algorithm is a well-established one used in the U.S. and other countries (e.g., Japan's allocation of preschools). However, he explained that the proposal suddenly gained attention because he had the opportunity to explain it directly to key politicians, resulting in its mention by the Prime Minister. While he was pleased that academics had the opportunity to influence public policy, he raised the question of whether this might have been done in a less inclusive way, like "whispering in a prince's ear," and how the idea of Plurality could be used to promote such a proposal in a more inclusive way He sought advice from Glenn and the audience on how Plurality's thinking could help promote such proposals in a more inclusive manner.

Glenn responded to Professor Kojima's comments by saying that there are two aspects that have changed his perspective. First, while economists tend to focus on the issue of **Allocation** (allocating fixed resources to people), they now see the issue of **Co-creation** (collective choices in curriculum, school construction, policy making, etc.) as equally important. This is the point where we have come to see the importance of co-creation** issues (collective choices about curriculum, school construction, policy making, etc.) as equally important. We mentioned that scarcity itself may be related to the fact that collective decisions are not being made in an ideal way. Second, the problem of co-creation is more difficult, and the difficulty of approaching an optimal solution leads us to aim for dramatic changes (improvement from 1% to 5%). He stated that such changes cannot be achieved without citizen participation because they have a significant impact on people's lives and cannot be "sneaked through by a prince". He therefore spoke of the need for a completely different methodology for engagement and discussion to address such a major issue.

Prof. Shimazu asked Glenn to delve further into how Plurality's ideas could improve the way society members make policy proposals and promote them.

Associate Professor Ema followed with her comments. From her perspective as a social scientist, she acknowledged the importance of plurality, co-creation, and participation, but noted that some people are unable to participate due to accessibility issues. She expressed concern that people in areas with limited or no Internet connectivity (rural Japan and the Global South) or those without access to technology are "invisible" and their voices are not heard. He stated that this is an infrastructure issue and that the roles of the public and private sectors will be critical. Another challenge with Plurality is that some people do not want to be involved in diverse discussions and do not recognize the value of diversity and inclusiveness. He pointed out the difficulty of how to approach those who do not want to accept the ideas and concepts of Plurality and how to deal with those who do not even have access to the technology. He asked about the scope of the Plurality concept, including

Glenn responded that inclusion means reaching out with love, care, empathy, and understanding, even to those who are perhaps the most difficult to embrace diversity. He stated that for the network to be strong and effective, it must reach less connected nodes and provide benefits to all. On the issue of accessibility, he explained that he has always insisted that digital public infrastructure be placed in the Transportation Committee rather than in the Assembly's Study Committee. He stated that compared to roads, digital infrastructure is very inexpensive and that the Internet can be a way for people who are not physically mobile (especially the elderly) to connect with others for hobbies, etc. He stated that Plurality is also valuable for those who desire a smaller community, and that even within communities, such as white supremacist communities, divisions exist and Plurality's tools are relevant to them as well. He said that while these practices and tools are relevant to all communities, not everyone bridges like "citizens of three countries," but the nature of diversity, where people are building bridges, is important.

Prof. Shimazu asked about the role of technocrats and experts in a digital democracy. Pointing out that people may not be interested in participating and that knowledge is necessary to participate in policy discussions, he asked for thoughts on the role that experts should play, as it is difficult for everyone to become an expert.

Glenn cited the ideas of John Dewey, noting that he was responding to a debate with Walter Lippmann (who argued that industrial societies are too complex to be managed by democracy and need to be managed by experts). Dewey said that, based on his experience in China, "experts" have an absolutely critical role, but it is a bit different from what is usually thought of. Dewey saw the role of the expert as "recognizing" the new social communities created by the new interdependencies created by the new technologies. He explained that democracy needed to be constantly reinvented, and that for Dewey, democracy was not about voting, but about people collectively governing their interdependencies. Since technology is constantly changing the nature of interdependence, the expert expressed the idea that it is necessary to identify these new forms of interdependence, create new populations, and allow these populations to self-govern once they recognize themselves. As an example, he said that the global warming issue has only become recognized through global statistical analysis, and that the role of the expert is not to impose his will as an expert on the issue, but to act as a mirror reflecting the new interdependent population.

Prof. Shimazu further reiterated the exclusionary nature of technology in an aging society (the younger generation who can use technology could take the lead) and asked what the ultimate goal of Plurality is, or whether this is an endless process, a socio-political movement.

Glenn stated that there are two contrasting ways of thinking about technology: SingularityPlurality. One is the image of digging down from the surface of a sphere to the core of truth; the other is the image of planting trees on the surface of a sphere and letting them grow into the infinite void. In the latter case, if the trees are too far away from each other, they lose the ability to cross-pollinate, so a better method (bees, transportation, etc.) is needed; Plurality is this way of thinking, and I stated that the goal is not utopia. They said that nothing is more hopeless than utopia, and their goal is to become "good enough ancestors. He explained that too good an ancestor binds the descendants, and an inadequate ancestor deprives them of opportunities, so the goal is to be just good enough ancestors.

An audience member asked whether the pro-social media and digital space has been contaminated by bots and fake accounts, and whether it reflects the true will of the people.

Glenn stated that bots are only one form of attack, and that the more essential issue is authentication. He explained that the core of authentication lies in the idea of meronymy, which means that the parts represent the whole (e.g., your eyes are part of you). He stated that there are many ways to uniquely identify people, not only by legal name, but also by the places they have visited, the people they know, their faces, etc. The privacy problem lies in a simple system that uses the same identification method everywhere. He said that conceptually this is a very easy problem to solve and that more sophisticated data structures are needed.

As a final question, he asked whether Plurality's project is based on the assumption that the majority is willing and able to rationally pursue the public good, and how it views the reality (that the majority is not necessarily so) as Hannah Arendt criticized in "The Banality of Evil," and whether disinformation He asked whether this approach is valid even in a society where disinformation is deeply rooted, and whether there could be a tipping point in a democratic society where that kind of majority is no longer present.

Mr. Glenn stated that the term "Majority" is not important in Plurality. The important perspective is "Diversity," he explained, and Plurality is not about majority rule in standard voting theory. Historically, he said, the idea of majority rule in a democracy has been an attempt to achieve, but a situation where 49% and 51% switch many times along the same lines is the worst way to cause civil war. The way to avoid civil war is to find "cross-sectional cleavages," i.e., a new majority that crosses the old majority each time a cleavage occurs, thus creating a situation where no one knows which side to take in a civil war. This is the essence of Plurality. He said that this is the essence of Plurality, and although the meaning of "rationally seeking truth" is not always clear, in his own experience, he has sought truth by exploring the viewpoints most different from his own. Through Plurality, he hopes to create a structure where others can do the same.

Finally, Prof. Shimazu closed the session and thanked the speakers and the audience.

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