Paper short abstract:

This paper documents the HanGee movement in Taiwan and shows how the making of a citizen’s phone and the nation are mutually constitutive.

Paper long abstract:

On Feb 28, 2014, Fred Chien, a Taiwanese maker initiated the "HanGee Movement." This project constituted a proposal for an open source "citizen's phone" for all Taiwanese citizens. It was to leverage Taiwanese engineering expertise and local materials.

Why is a maker project about a mobile phone positioned as a "movement"? What is a "citizen's phone"? Why do Taiwanese people need their own phones, distinct from everyone else's? The HanGee Movement is both a technical and political project. It contributes to a series of closely related burning questions in Taiwan's policy, technology, and creative communities: What is the place of Taiwan on the global stage, culturally and economically? How might Taiwan's proud engineering culture best be utilized in service of its people?

The date of this movement is significant. It references an infamous moment in Taiwan's history in which the government massacred tens of thousands of civilians, marking the beginning of the "White Terror" period. How the 228 Incident subsequently came to be commemorated is of singular symbolic importance in Taiwan's democracy. By positioning the HanGee project as a "movement" and referencing the 228 Incident, Chien offered a proposal that links IT innovation, Taiwanese nation-building, and democratic progress. It is doubtful that Chien sincerely believed a phone will lead to such transformations. It is best interpreted as an aspirational image, one that proposes a way of framing the relationships among technology, economy, democracy, and Taiwanese identity and serves an epistemic function, both proposing and enacting a distinctively Taiwanese preferred future.