Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network Episode: Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024) Host: Li Ping Chen Date: February 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features a detailed discussion between host Li Ping Chen and Dr. Honghong Tinn about Tinn’s new book, Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry. The book charts Taiwan’s remarkable journey from a former colony and marginalized state to a global technology powerhouse. Dr. Tinn challenges the stereotypical East-as-imitator/West-as-innovator narrative, highlighting the crucial role of local engineers, students, technocrats, military, women workers, and entrepreneurs who collectively shaped Taiwan’s unique approach to computing innovation through hands-on "tinkering."

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Dr. Honghong Tinn’s Background

• Dr. Tinn is a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in both the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She teaches courses on computing history, the internet, and ethics in technology, and serves in various scholarly associations.
  (03:13)

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2. Origins of the Book: A Personal and Historical Perspective

• Tinn's interest began during her college days in Taiwan, where building your own computer was common. This personal experience motivated her to explore the historical roots of Taiwan’s DIY computing culture, tracing its evolution from the 1960s onward.
  (05:04)

Notable Quote:

“When I was a college student, I built my own desktop computers… I started thinking about was this kind of putting together your own computer culture also kind of dominating the computer culture in the 60s, 70s, 80s...”
— Honghong Tinn (05:04)

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3. Chapters 1-3: The Pivotal Role of Jiao Tong University (NCTU)

• Jia Tong University’s Centrality:
  The first computers in Taiwan (IBM mainframes) were installed at Jia Tong University via a UN technical aid program, sparking early computing education and research.
• Strategic Framing:
  Alumni emphasized electrical engineering’s importance by analogizing it to nuclear science, appealing to the Cold War government’s prioritization of technological self-sufficiency.
• Negotiating Aid:
  There were significant differences in priorities between Taiwanese applicants (long-term STEM education) and the UN (immediate industry impact), leading to intricate negotiations.
• Early Tinkering:
  The university famously hired an in-house technician to maintain an IBM mainframe, rather than relying on IBM’s service—an early, practical example of “tinkering.” (07:43-13:17)

Notable Quote:

“...shows how the tinkering practice was already kind of beginning in the computing culture in Taiwan in the 1960s.”
— Honghong Tinn (12:50)

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4. Chapter 4: Military and Technology

• Timelines:
  Military began using computers in 1967 but had already sent personnel for training as early as 1962 at Jia Tong University.
• International Interplay:
  CIA involvement in installing an IBM computer for intelligence sharing in Taiwan in 1963 underscores US-Taiwan ties.
• Contrast with the US:
  Unlike the US’s “military-industrial-academic complex,” in Taiwan, academia (esp. Jia Tong University) was ahead of the military in adopting computer technology.
  (14:31–19:11)

Notable Quote:

“In Taiwan you don’t really see that triangle [military-industrial-academic complex]... Jiao Tong University was actually ahead of military to do all this kind of application part of it.”
— Honghong Tinn (18:44)

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5. Chapter 5: Student Tinkerers and Entrepreneurial Origins

• Student Projects:
  1960s students at multiple universities attempted to build mini-computers and calculators from scratch, sourcing recycled/new components from various origins.
• Success Story – Barry Lam:
  Notably, Barry Lam participated in such projects at National Taiwan University before founding Quanta Computer, now a major global supplier (17% of servers worldwide; produced 1 in 3 laptops globally as of 2020).
• Hands-on Skills as Innovation Seeds:
  Lam’s practical soldering and assembly skills are highlighted as pivotal to his and Taiwan’s manufacturing success. (21:22–26:33)

Notable Quote:

“He was really the best person in the company to do soldering, welding, computer parts or circuits...he was really good with these hands on experiences.”
— Honghong Tinn (25:50)

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6. Chapters 6–7: Factories, Engineers, and Gendered Labor

• Export Processing Zones:
  Since the mid-1960s, government policy encouraged foreign manufacturers to establish factories in Taiwan, which became training grounds for a new class of engineering talent.
• Engineers’ Pathways:
  Male engineers (often college-educated) gained expertise maintaining and adapting foreign machinery, which later enabled entrepreneurial ventures.
• Women Workers:
  Female factory workers were lauded for dexterity and reliability but faced lower wages, crowded dorms, health hazards, and virtually no upward mobility compared to men.
• Memory Work and Cultural Reflections:
  A unique anecdote details a woman worker likening her job in magnetic core memory assembly to ‘operation of a computer with a memory unit’—demonstrating the intersection of labor, technology, and identity.
• Representation in Literature:
  The 1979 film Fly Up with Love offered a rare, if optimistic, vision of alternative futures for factory women. (27:57–44:36)

Notable Quote:

“They needed to figure out the kind of most successful way to put together a product… they needed to standardize their bodily experiences...”
— Honghong Tinn (34:10)

“...think of our work as the operation of a computer with a memory unit...”
— Woman factory worker, as relayed by Tinn (41:36)

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7. Chapters 8–9: The Rise of Acer and Stan Shih

• Multitech to Acer:
  Stan Shih, another quintessential tinkerer, founded Multitech (which became Acer), drawing on hands-on experience assembling electronics and managing start-ups.
• Business and Legal Innovation:
  Acer navigated the gray area between compatible and counterfeit products (Apple/IBM lawsuits), necessitating both technical and strategic corporate innovations.
• International Negotiations:
  Acer’s growth required not only hardware knowledge but constant negotiation and adaptation to international competitors’ strategies and intellectual property claims. (46:48–54:39)

Notable Quote:

“Taiwanese tinkerers always have to… strategically cope with, with or negotiated with the misunderstandings and conflicts when they interacted with their international counterparts.”
— Honghong Tinn (52:10)

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8. Chapter 10: TSMC and the ‘Dedicated Foundry’ Model

• Morris Chang and the TSMC Revolution:
  TSMC’s innovative “dedicated foundry” model—separating IC design from IC manufacturing—was realized by Morris Chang in 1987, leveraging Taiwan’s robust industrial infrastructure and foreign partnerships (notably with Philips).
• Taiwan’s Unique Ecosystem:
  The book argues such a model was only possible in Taiwan, due to the interplay of government support, industrial readiness, and cross-national corporate alliances. (55:39–64:12)

Notable Quote:

“...his genius idea was also a product of the Taiwanese society at that time because in the mid-1980s, this new type of dedicated foundry model was only possible in Taiwan because of Taiwan’s existing industrial infrastructure...”
— Honghong Tinn (56:37)

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9. What’s Next?

• Dr. Tinn has recently completed an article, Teaching the History of Emerging Technologies in the Information Age, arguing that historians of technology offer vital context and critical thinking for today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape. The article will be included in a volume honoring her advisor Ronald R. Klein.
  (64:50–68:14)

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Memorable Moments

• The story of a woman factory worker likening her job to the operation of a computer memory (41:36) underscores the deep entanglement of technological labor and personal identity.
• The connection between Taiwan’s student-led tinkering in the 1960s and the global dominance of firms like Quanta Computer, Acer, and TSMC illustrates the country’s unique path from “hands-on” to “high-tech.”

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Key Timestamps

• 03:13 — Dr. Tinn’s background and academic trajectory
• 05:04 — Origins of the book and personal inspiration
• 07:43 — Jia Tong University as technological launchpad
• 14:31 — Military adoption of computers and US-Taiwan collaboration
• 21:22 — Student innovation, DIY projects, and the Barry Lam story
• 27:57 — Factory engineers, export zones, gendered labor dynamics
• 34:10 — Women’s experience and challenges in tech factories
• 41:36 — Women workers “internalizing” memory work
• 46:48 — Stan Shih’s journey and Acer’s emergence
• 55:39 — Morris Chang, TSMC, and Taiwan’s foundry breakthrough
• 64:50 — Future projects and focus on teaching tech history

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Further Resources (as discussed in episode):

• Fly Up with Love (1979 film): A rare portrayal of women factory workers’ lives (IMDb link in show notes)
• Yangyang Zheng’s podcast on labor and deindustrialization in East Asia
• Dr. Tinn’s YouTube presentations on Acer, Apple, and Taiwan’s computing companies (links to be added in show notes)
• The book Island Tinkerers is open access—see show notes for the link

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Summary in the Author's Words:

"Defying the stereotypes of 'the West innovates and the East imitates,' my book tells the story of Taiwanese technologists over the past six decades—how their hands-on tinkering catalyzed both understanding and innovation, making firms like Acer, Asus, Quanta, and TSMC global players." — Honghong Tinn (paraphrased from introduction)

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For listeners and readers interested in Taiwan’s rise as a technological superpower, the entanglement of education, gender, labor, and entrepreneurship, and the lived realities behind the devices we use every day, Island Tinkerers provides a rich, critical, and human-centered history.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[B]

Hello everyone and welcome back to the New Books Network. I'm Li Ping Chen, your host for today's episode. Today we will be talking to Dr. Ong Hong Ting about her new book Island Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry. This book was published by the MIT Press in 2025. How did Taiwan rise to global prominence in high tech manufacturing? From computer maker to the world's leading chip manufacturer? How did Taiwan, the former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Nationalist government, ascend to such heights in high tech manufacturing? In this book, Hong Hong Ting tell us the critical history about the hobbyists and enthusiasts, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users and engineers turned entrepreneurs helped transform Taiwan with their hands on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US Sources, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brands of successful innovation. Defying the stereotypes of the west innovates and the east imitates, Ting tells the story of Taiwanese technologist Effer O Ber the sixth decade in the past. Beginning in the 1960s, they grappled with the black box computers that were newly available through the international technological aid programs. Shortly after that, multinational corporations that outsourced transistor and integrated circuit assembly overseas began employing Taney's engineers and factory workers. Island tinkers developed strategies to adapt, modify, assemble and work with computers in an inventive manner. It was through this creative and ingenious tinkering with computers that they were able to gain a better understanding of the technology, opening the door to future manufacturing endeavors that now include Acer, Foscon, Asus and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. I want to mention that this open access for this book, I will link it in the show notes so make sure you check it out. So this is a brief introduction about the book and now let's turn it to the author. Hong Hong. Welcome to the show.

[A]

Hi. Ali Ping. Nice to meet you.

[B]

Nice to meet you and thank you for accepting this invitation. But before we talk about your book, Hong Hong, I was wondering if you can begin by introducing a little bit about yourself. Sure.

[A]

So I'm a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. I'm assistant professor in the program in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and also the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. And I'm also a McKnight Lindgren professor from 2025 to 2027. So at the University of Minnesota I teach several undergraduate courses including History of Comp History of the Internet, Ethics in Science and Technology. And I also advise PhD students there. So Island Tinkerers is a book that I published last year, January, and really appreciate the opportunity to be here to talk about it. And I'm also a co author of a textbook called Computer History of the Information Machine, the fourth edition. And I participated in several kind of scholarly associations. I was an elected member of the executive council and the nominating committee for the Society for the History of Technology. And I'm also an associate editor of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. So very happy to be able to be here and talk about my book.

[B]

Thank you, Hong Hong. And thank you for introducing about your research background and also the classes you teach and also the kind of academic community that you engage in too. And with all that. So how did you get this book started?

[A]

Yeah, so when I was a college student, I built my own desktop computers. And that was in Taiwan. So in Taiwan it was quite convenient for anyone to go to a kind of giant, super kind of department store where you can buy a lot of electronics parts and then you can build your own computers at home. And so when I started my PhD program, I was really interested in writing about this fascinating culture in Taiwan. And so I talk with my advisor, Ron Klein, and then he is a historian and he said that's historicizes. And so I started thinking about was this kind of putting together your own computer culture also kind of dominating the computer culture in the 60s, 70s, 80s, so on and so forth. So I went back to see archival documents, biographies, some historical primary sources to figure out if there was a kind of DIY computer culture existing and how early I can trace that to. So that was really how I started my research on this book.

[B]

Thank you, Hong Hong. And especially how talented you are. You build your own computer. I guess for some of the audience nowadays, it might be interesting to imagine, you know, you build your own computer, you know, you choose different parts and then you make them together and you purchase different parts from different stores and then make them your own creation. So I guess we will talk more about that, how that actually happened in the different chapters. And so thank you for letting us know the beginning of this project, how you historicize and contextualize your own experience and make it academic work. And with that background. So now we will turn to the book itself. So as you mentioned, this is a book about the history of computing and making computers in Taiwan. And from chapter one, two and three, you focus on a very important institution in Taiwan. This is a Jia Tong University or nctu. So can you tell us a little bit more about Jaotong University and why it is important in this process and how its students, its alumni, contribute to Taiwan's early development of computer and computing?

[A]

Yeah, so I started with Jiao Tong University because the first two computers that were ever available in Taiwan was installed on that campus. And so the first two available computers to Taiwanese students, researchers, were IBM computers, and they were mainframe computers. And the reason they were installed at Jia Tong University was through a technical aid program offered by United Nations. So this aid program provided financial resources for. For Jiao Tong University to buy equipment and to invite American professors to visit Taiwan and teach shortened courses, including undergraduate courses, and kind of shortened training courses for engineers across the island. And so this was kind of a program to allow Jia Tong University to train the first generation of computer engineers and computer programmers. And so specifically, my chapter one was about how Jiao Tong University alumni moved from China to Taiwan after 1945, started to lobby the government in the 1950s to reopen Jiao Tong University in Taiwan. And my argument for that chapter is that they kind of created a discourse about the importance of the electrical engineering discipline. And the strategy they took was that they emphasized that there was a analogy between the studies of electronics with the studies of atoms. So if the government at that time believed that nuclear energy was a really important thing to study, then they should be also paying attention to the study of electronics electrons. So electrical engineering is a subject to do this. Right. And so they also kind of emphasized this Cold War background. So during the Cold War, people were worrying about outbreak of a hot war. And so Jaodong University alumni moved from China to Taiwan would try to persuade the government that you will need engineers during a wartime. Therefore, it would be really important to strengthen the engineering education in Taiwan. So that's my chapter one. My chapter two is specifically about the application for the technical aid program from the United Nations. And so I emphasize the discrepancy between the Taiwanese applicants and the United nations agency kind of officials. So the Taiwanese technocrats, scientists who wanted to apply for this technical aid program to bring resources to Taiwan, would like to see the strengthening of STEM education in Taiwan. So they believe that if you have really good undergraduate education, then you will have a good industry. However, from the perspective from the United nations aid agencies, the. They don't really see that connection to the industry very clear. So they wanted to see a more immediate, direct connection between university and the industry. So they want to see, you know, for example, Internships or professors doing specific research project for problem issue proposed by a company. So chapter two is about that negotiating process to really allow both sides of this application process to kind of negotiate and then find out acceptable plans for both sides. And my chapter three focused on the actual installation of the two computers and how American visiting professors and local students and faculty members really working together to allow the computers to be kind of installable and then to be workable and maintainable by local personnel. And I specifically talk about how Jiaotong University decided to replace the IBM's service package and hire an in house technician to do the maintenance of the second computer. And it was a really unusual setting at that moment moment. But it shows how the tinkering practice was already kind of beginning in the computing culture in Taiwan in the 1960s.

[B]

Thank you. Specifically, as you lay out, you know, from this US technological aid program, bringing in technology training, resources, strategy and moving on to chapter two, the application. Whereas Chinese, they might want kind of long term, they want this to be kind of education, cultivating local talents, local people. Whereas the US they want to see more immediate impact. They want to see internship research that can lead to some impact in the industry comparatively faster. Whereas chapter three, it's more about this kind of like a collaboration and how this installation the decision and make this happen. And also as you analyze, to maintain. Right, maintain the computer as well. So with that, in addition to the academia, the industry, Taiwanese military forces, they were also using computers. So in chapter four, this is your main point. Can you tell us a little bit about Taiwanese military forces and then also how and when they start using computer for data processing?

[A]

Yeah. So the short answer to Your question was 1967, the Taiwanese military sector started to own a computer on their site. But of course, history is all about complicated stories. So I will begin with 1962. So when Jaotong University started to have the first mainframe computers, they started to offer training programs, training courses to engineers from different industries in Taiwan, including the military agencies in Taiwan. So in 1962, several military agencies in Taiwan actually sent trainees to attend these shortened courses to learn how to use computers, to do research, to do data processing, and to do a lot of complicated math for weather forecasting, so on and so forth. And so the interesting thing here is Taiwanese universities, this Jaotong University was actually ahead of the military to start using computers. And another example I would like to mention is in 1963, the U.S. central Intelligence Agency, CIA actually arranged the installation of the IBM computer at the office of Zhang Jinguo's office. And this was to kind of aid the collaborations between CIA and Taiwanese intelligence agencies and to share kind of surveillance data that collected by Taiwanese military personnel over PRC kind of military development. And so this was again, we don't really know much about the computer because it was not really through the primary sources that I was able to access to. I don't. I didn't really know which computer it was, but I knew it was a IBM computer. And so these were kind of examples about military related usage of computers before Taiwanese military really had access to their own computers. So let's go back to the kind of official record it was in 1967. The Army Logistics Command was able to rent IBM 360 computer, which was a really advanced computer product at that time. And the second computer that the military was able to use in Taiwan was a Control Data Corporation computer. We call it a CDC computer. And CDC is actually a Minnesota company. And this computer was installed in a research center owned by the military. So you probably have heard National Zhongshan Institute of Science and Technology. So this was where the computer was installed. And through these cases and the later kind of usage of computers in Taiwanese military, I am trying to kind of develop one argument about this comparison between US and Taiwan. So for a lot of historians of science and technology or U.S. historians, U.S. history focused historians, we often like to talk about the military industrial academic complex in the United States. So because of military funding, it kind of facilitated a lot of development of computing technologies. And so the military, academia and industry were growing together to advance the design and applications of these computing technologies. But in Taiwan you don't really see that triangle model over there. Instead Jiao Tong University was actually ahead of military to do all this kind of application part of it. So I thought that's a really interesting differences between the Taiwanese case with the different than the US case.

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[B]

Hong Kong especially for mentioning these kind of history and thinking about early on early 60s CIA and then install the computer. So this kind of Sino US milit connection. Whereas a few years later we started to see the military itself starting to use and install computer. But as you mentioned, especially this sharp comparison to the US situation you know in Taiwan it seems to be the academic, I mean here specific the J University, they seem to kind of lead the way for the computing and computer usage in Taiwan. I mean at least at that time time. And with that we talk about Dalton University, we talk about the military and chapter five move to specifically a group of people and this is the Taiwanese college student and graduate students. So can you tell us also around this time in the 60s, especially the late 60s, how did Taiwanese college student and graduate student develop this interest in building mini computers and calculators?

[A]

Yeah, so in my chapter five I focus on three groups of students including graduate students and undergraduate students venturing into building mini computers and calculators. And they tried to do it from scratch. And so the motivation is that they were pretty much hope to kind of explore the black box, the technology and to see if they can put together a minicomputer or calculator. And through that they were hoping that they could know how to mass manufacture those technologies that they were building. And so I think the most remarkable part of this history was that they they did it through like a sourcing components ranging from recycled electronics parts to items custom made at some factories. And so they just try their best to find components that can be useful for their tinkering project. And so the three universities three projects that I looked at in my chapter includes Zhao Tong University project and Chengong University project and National Taiwan University project. And the National Taiwan University project is a project that involved with a really famous person in Taiwan. Now so one of the major person who participated in a mini computer building project at Tai Da National Han University was Barry Pam. He is the founder of the Quanta Computer and He's ranked the 192nd richest person in the world right now. And so let me talk about his college life a little bit. So he was originally from Hong Kong, but then he moved to Taiwan to do undergraduate and a master degree in double E at National Taiwan university. So by 1972 he was trying to finishing up his master's thesis and he decided that he was going to build a mini computer for this master's research project. And so after graduating from National Taiwan University, he joined one of the very first few calculator startup companies. And then he worked for another company to build calculators next year. And so for many years he was in this calculator manufacturing industry. Eventually he founded his own Company in 1988, Quanta Computer. And so Quantum Computer has been a leading manufacturer in two products at least one is laptops and the other is the servers, you know, service used in kind of data centers nowadays. So in terms of laptop, in 2020, one out of every three laptops in the world was a Quanta Computer. And because Quantum Computer has been a subcontractor, so they build computers for other companies. So perhaps some of our listeners owned a computer built by Quanta, but we wouldn't know because it probably is branded as another company. Right. And then in terms of the service market, Quanta computer currently enjoys 17% of the market share. And so it's behind Hewlett Packard and Dell, but it has been doing very well in terms of this server industry. And and so Pauline Lam is a really important island tinkerer in my book because if you look at his oral history, interviews and some biographies, you could immediately find a lot of discussions about how he was really the best person in the company to do soldering, welding, computer parts or you know, circuits, IC circuits when he was in the calculator industry. So he was really good with these hands on experiences. So this is my chapter five about, you know, building minicomputers and calculators from scratch.

[B]

Thank you, Hong Hong. And especially as you mentioned, those our listeners, you might actually be using a computer or the technological equipment actually, you know, related to Taiwan, Taiwanese technology or from the company itself. And in chapter the example is Barry Lam, Lin Bailey and also the Quanta Computer Guangda company. So this is how you should check out this book, right? You are maybe using the product, so might as well know the history behind it. And again, this is openss book and you can find the link in the show note. And so with that, so we talk about the college students and then later on they built the minicomputer and Barry Lam, and then also later on started the company Quanta Computer. Later on in chapter six and seven, you talk about more people in this kind of direction and also kind of expand in this direction. Especially from the late 60s and 1970s, they are some of the engineers. They started to have technical and management knowledge. So can you tell us about these engineers and how they actually get their own factory started?

[A]

Yeah. So one of the many factors that allowed these engineers turned entrepreneurs to be successful was their experiences working with multinational companies, factories in Taiwan. So since the mid-1960s, the Taiwanese government set up several export processing zones. And these export processing zones was to encourage foreign companies, including European companies, Japanese companies, United States companies to invest in Taiwan. So they encourage companies overseas to sell, set up factories in these zones, and then these companies will be able to enjoy these, you know, reduce the tax holidays, and also less expensive labor force in Taiwan in the late 1960s. So, for example, the Dutch multinational Philips set up a factory in Taiwan since 1967. And American companies included Fioco, Ford, IC Co. At that time, and also Texas Instruments. And so these multinational companies had to hire local engineers in Taiwan, they had to hire factory workers in Taiwan. And oftentimes factory workers are women. And so in chapter six, I'm trying to argue that these maintenance engineers, quality control engineers, and also women factory workers are also very important tinkerers in Taiwanese technology history. They had to really use their skills and knowledge in order to make sure they can produce the technology products that the owner of the factories would like to sell. Right. So they really pretty much have to kind of of play a very important role to ensure the quality of these ICs, radios, TVs, computer memories, so on and so forth. And so in terms of the engineers part, most of them were college educated or associate level educated men. And they are oftentimes quality control engineers, maintenance engineers for machinery on site or equipment engineers. And a lot of them, in my chapter, I try to kind of give a brief biographies of a couple of examples that engineers turned into entrepreneurs in the 70s and 80s and by using their experiences when they worked for these multinational companies. And the very important background is that for a US company or for Philips, a Dutch company, to set up a factory in Taiwan, they needed to deal with a lot of uncertainties and contingencies, right? Because they might import factory machinery from overseas to Taiwan. So they often do not have, have enough immediate technical support to really maintain those machinery. And sometimes they don't even have the source materials they need, and they need to kind of Import from overseas or work with Taiwanese companies to meet the demand that they need to really run the factory. And so I'm trying to argue that those local engineers in Taiwan really play an important role to kind of improvise and in order to make the factories workable and operational smoothly, in order to run the, you know, the factory and then to produce electronics products. So this is a chapter about two things, men's factories and then so the title is actually men's factory and women's memory. So I have this counterpart about this. Women factory worker do not enjoy a lot of kind of promotion opportunities. So you see a lot of men becoming entrepreneurs in their later career path. But women factory workers did not really enjoy that much promotion opportunities in the later parts of their career.

[B]

Thank you, Hong Hong, especially you mentioned how these local engineers, their working experience and management maintenance with the kind of multinational companies, their experience helped them to build their own career, build their own factories. And you also mentioned the foreign investment, the foreign company, they started to build factories in the dedicated tech industry zone in Taiwan and some of the challenges they encountered. But I want to zoom in in one group of people that you actually already mentioned. But I want to hear you talk a little bit more. This is about the women here and especially how, as you mentioned, they didn't seem to have, you know, positive experience, or at least as positive as their male counterpart might have. So can you tell us more about this group of people, the women in the industry, in the factory, the experience, and also particularly the challenges they face.

[A]

Face, yeah. So I found that women workers in Taiwan at these electronics assembly factories really engaged in the practice of tinkering, meaning that they needed to figure out the kind of most successful way to put together a product or a assembly or build electronic products. And they needed to standardize their bodily experiences and technical experiences in order to meet the production demands. Right. And their overseas employers knew that. So they would be willing to hire women workers in Taiwan and set up factories in Taiwan in order to save their cost for manufacturing. And oftentimes the Taiwanese women factory workers would receive a lower wage compared to United States, Japan and Hong Kong at that time. So they were just really kind of sought after labor force, globally speaking, high quality and, you know, low wage. And so in this chapter, I talk about a little bit about their experiences. So, for example, they often lived in very crowded dorms. A lot of factories were kind of even kind of established or set up before dorms are available. So when my workers needed to stay in some nearby apartments or waiting for the dorms to be built and then move in. And so the condition, the, you know, the, the living condition is not ideal. And I talk about some occupational health problems like work injuries. And also, you know, like a lot of chemicals used in IC packaging industry is har harmful. So there are real cases of such kind of work injuries. And also there are a lot of short stories, novels published at that time to talk about how working overtime can cause someone to fall from the second floor of the factory to the first floor. And then they would have to work very hard in order to get the company to cover their hospital stays, so on and so forth. And so. So I especially focus on the challenges about their career development. So women workers often will be laid off and then, you know, lay off and then come back to work in the same factory or they move to different factories and they don't really have a lot of career opportunities to advance from, from kind of working class over here. And so from the primary sources I can see there were some anthropologists visiting Taiwan and then doing oral history interviews. And then I found these interviews talking about like some women would not really know what to do next in their career development, right? Because what they can see at that moment was really just do the job well, right? And also women factory workers tend not to have like as good as the educational backgrounds compared to the male engineers. So they were not that well educated. So if they only have like elementary school degree, middle school education background, they don't really have a lot of promotion opportunities for the later parts of their life. And they don't have the financial resources to start a new company either. Right. So this is what I found in the primary sources. But I would love to share with you about a movie released in Taiwan in 1970. And this was a fictional story, but it kind of touched upon a lot of parts of women workers life in a factory, especially in electronics industry. So the movie is called Fly up with Love. This is the English translation. The Chinese translation is for a while we can actually watch this movie from Apple tv but not anymore nowadays days. But so this is a romance story and setting in an icy packaging factory. And so the women protagonist in this movie was able to kind of leave the factory and start a new business on making plastic flowers in living rooms. So she basically reach out to family members and friends and to do some small business in her living room to do to put together plastic flowers. And this was in 1979. So I found this movie is interesting because it painted a relatively kind of optimistic viewpoint about the possible life trajectory, business opportunities, women factory worker could enjoy. But I think it's a really special example, which is not really a lot. I mean, if you look at the contemporary entrepreneurs of electronics companies in Taiwan, you see most of them are men. And many of them had experiences working for international companies factories in Taiwan in the 70s and 80s or even 90s. Okay, so before we move to next question, I want to share another example about kind of women factory workers cybernetic conceptualization of their work. And so I found this case from a newspaper article. And so basically this is about magnetic core memory units. So magnetic core memory units is a type of computer memory used in 50s, 60s and into 70s. And to make these memory units, a worker will have to use a microscope to kind of thread thin wires through a tiny core. And so it's a bit like a weaving. And it's very labor intensive. And because it was labor intensive, it was one of the many tasks that multinational manufacturers outsourced to Taiwanese factories. And so in 1972, a journalist interviewed women factory worker who just got promoted to be the quality control department for testing magnetic core memory units. And so the journalist asked this women factory worker about how do you kind of perform your job well? What's your secret about doing your job well? And so the women factory workers said that it is really important to adjust our mentality to think of our work as the operation of a computer with a memory unit. And the journalist was quite puzzled. And then he asked, what do you mean by a computer? Right? And so the women worker said, and I quote, yes, like a computer, after many years of employment, someone may still make the same mistake that he or she made 10 or 20 years ago. In working space, that person might have been hard working, but what is absent is that he or she should recall carefully the mistakes he or she made, think thoroughly what caused the mistakes, and remember the causes and results of the mistakes by heart. End of quote. So the journalist then concluded the use of memorization was her key to succeed. And so I found this is a really interesting example that because of their work were really about making computer memories, they kind of internalized this machine enabled memorization process into their work practice. And I felt this is a really interesting kind of intersection between technology and culture and also this factory setting in Taiwan in the 70s. And if our listeners are interested, I know another scholar, Yang Yang Zheng recently produced a podcast about labor and de industrialization in East Asia. So she interviewed two authors. One is anthropologist professor at Cunningham and another scholar that Yang Yangzhen had a conversation with is a Harvard professor in sociology, Lei Yawen. So An Ru Lee had a book on Taiwanese factory workers and especially she used a very anthropological ways to talk about their presence in a city. And so this is a really interesting podcast I thought I would share with our listeners if you are interested in women factory workers, Taiwan, East Asia overall.

[B]

Thank you Hong Hong especially you know, talk about women and then thinking about the challenges they face. As you mentioned, you know their low wage especially lower compared to the male counterparts and also the living conditions, some of the health issue they have and also just very crowded the living space and also lack of the career development opportunities as well and also the lack of resources to advance their career and also thinking about the resources they could have or actually didn't really have too much in terms of building up their own factories, especially compared to their male counterparts. And I especially appreciate you mentioned the movie Fly up with Love. I will link the IMDb link in the show note as well. So for readers if you audience if you're interested finding more information about this movie and also later on I will link the Yang Yang Zhen's podcast link there. So just make sure that if you want to know more about these kind of women factory worker, especially back in the 70s or so, the experience and also the challenges they faced. And with that. So that is about the first part of the book all the way to chapter seven and later on chapter eight, nine and ten talk about two different pioneers and also two different companies. So I was wondering, can you tell us about Stan Shi or Shi Zhenrong and also his computer and Acer and especially how he realized his dream of manufacturing computers domestically and after that become a very, very popular subcontractor for prestigious computer makers all around the world. So yeah, this will be about chapter eight and nine.

[A]

Yeah. So I focus on Stan Shi Shi Zhenrong in chapter eight and nine for two reasons of all. He's also a tinkerer like Poly Lam Limaily and I will explain about that very soon. And secondly, he was really symbolized the kind of one of the most prominent example about a successful Taiwanese computer manufacturer. And so starting from how STI was a tinkerer in the history in the primary sources I could find. So Stan she founded Multitech in 1976 and Multitech was the predecessor of Acer Computer. So Multitech renamed itself into acer computer in 1987. Before 1976, before Stan Shore Xi started his own company, he worked for several different companies. And actually after he got a Master degree from Jiao Tong University. The first job he was working was about overseeing magnetic core memory unit manufacturing in a company called Unitron. And this was around 1970. And Unitron soon kind of delved into the area of calculators and made the first domestically made calculator in Taiwan. And so after that Stan she worked for another company and also design and manufacture calculator. And so when he was working on these calculators, I'm trying to argue that he was really familiar with this manufacturing of electronic products. So he really know the nitty gritty part of it. For example, he would often visit the Zhonghua Arcade at that time. So this is a place where Taiwanese customers could go to look for new and used electronics at that time. And so he would source the materials there and prototype printed circuit boards for his calculators. And then once he finished the printed circuit boards, in his biographies and interviews he talked about how he had to dry those printed circuit boards in the balcony of his office. And so he was really like, knows a lot about this tinkering culture from my reading of the primary sources and his biographies. So that's one of the major reason that I I really focus on him. And secondly his company was really successful and then but of course his company is one of the many successful companies that started to make a star kind of startup companies to make computers in the 80s. So at this time a lot of Taiwanese companies and also global entrepreneurs were, were buying microprocessors from the United States and then imported microprocessors into their own country. And then they can build and design a product based on these microprocessors. And so Stan Shi and many computer startup Companies in early 1980s were building Apple compatible computers or, or IBM compatible computers. And they were really kind of good with doing that because at that time programming writing codes were not, you know, compared to nowadays the codes needed to run a computer in early 1980s would be kind of fewer lines compared to the codes that you need to write for running a computer nowadays. And however, in response, world leading computer makers such as Apple Computer and IBM contested these new companies strategies of developing compatible computers. From their perspective, they believed that these compatible computers were all counterfeit products. And so I discussed how Stan she kind of managed these crises and how to manage the debates among what counts counterfeits and what counts compatible computers in the 80s and 90s and how he at the same time kind of leads the company to do a lot of technology advances including kind of of developed the second 30 bit computer in 1986 in the world. And that was even before IBM. And so chapter eight was majorly about Acer computer versus Apple computer in terms of accounts compatible and how Apple Computer was not willing to allow any compatible products on the market. And chapter nine is about how IBM started to charge royalties from all IBM compatible makers around the world, including a lot of American companies such as Compaq. So this was in 1987. And I talk about how Sanshi led the company to kind of work with IBM and then to figure out how to expand the market share of his products. And so in these chapters I'm also trying to illustrate another layer of meaning of tinkering in my book. So in addition to this hands on experiences as tinkering, I'm also trying to say that Taiwanese tinkerers always have to kind of strategically cope with, with or negotiated with the misunderstandings and conflicts when they interacted with their international counterparts. So I found Stan Shi's example is a really good example about how at the hardware part and also at the business opportunities part, since she had to kind of improvise a lot to deal with all the possible kind of of competitions with other companies in the world. And so I have fortunately had several opportunities to present in detail about my chapter eight, which is about these incompatible computer dreams between Acer and Apple in the 80s. And so if listeners are interested, so maybe one or two YouTube videos can be found online about my chapter eight. Yeah, so I probably should start here, stop here.

[B]

Sorry, no worries at all. And then I will be asking you about those YouTube links later because I do want to link it in our show note as well. And so thank you for giving us this kind of overview about how Stan she generally especially you know, in addition to this hands on experience, but also have the stretch strategic kind of cope and dealing with international counterparts, for example Apple and IBM as well. And now we will be moving to chapter 10. And this is actually about Zhang Zhongmo and also his company tsmc. So this is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing company. I guess many of our listener actually hear about this company in recent news and about technology, trade, war and things like that. So now let's get to know more about this company and especially its founder Zhang Zhongmo.

[A]

Yeah, so we can probably start with the dedicated foundry model definition since I think Li Pin kind of emphasized that a little bit. So this dedicated foundry model is kind of different from the traditional model, which is the integrated device manufacturer model. So sometimes we call it idm. So dedicated foundry model was developed by John Zhongmong in 1987 when he set up TSMC and before that, all the silicon wafers were produced by integrated device manufacturers such as Intel, Texas Instruments, IBM or even Toshiba. And so in traditional model, a company will do IC design and the IC will specifically used for their company's products. And and so those manufacturing of the ICs will be done by in house factories, in house fabs or fabrication facilities. But Maurice Chung in 1987 was trying to build fabrication facilities for any possible companies in the the world to realize or materialize their IC designs. So it was a type of labor division between IC manufacturing and IC design. So I'm trying to argue that of course Zhang Zhonglong in many people's kind of evaluation, including myself, is a really great gift genius. You know, he invented and developed this new model and built up a huge business entities in order to carry out this new type of chip manufacturing. But his I'm trying to argue in chapter 10 that his genius idea was also a product of the Taiwanese society at that time because in the mid-1980s, this new type of dedicated foundry model was only possible in Taiwan because of Taiwan's existing industrial infrastructure, including a very strong IC packaging industry and a booming computing manufacturing industry. And so it's kind of part of the product of the Taiwan Taiwanese industrial kind of infrastructure. And so I can briefly share with you maybe two short examples about how the founding of this model, the founding of TSMC was really related to what Taiwan could offer at that time. So back to the labor division between IC Design and IC Manufacturing. So, so in 1979 there was a new textbook called Introduction to Very large Scale Integration Chip Design System. And this book was famously new, known as kind of the most important textbook to really teach and expand the IC design field. And so more is changing Chan in many occasions oral history interviews and his biographies talk about how reading this book helped him to come up with this idea about dedicated foundry model because the book kind of separated the concern between IC Design and IC Manufacturing. However, by 1985 when Zhang Zhongmo Morris Chang was asked to set up a new company in Taiwan by Taiwanese technocrats, he was debating between IC design and IC manufacturing a little bit. And so in some oral history, even interviews, you can see that he said if you were there in 1985, you knew that the strength of Taiwan was actually IC manufacturing because just many company was doing a lot of manufacturing, IC manufacturing, computer manufacturing and then that time, right? So because we talk about IC packaging and they were different type of practices. However, you could actually find a group of kind of hardware machinery engineers in Taiwan in 1985 to start this new sector of icing wafer manufacturing. So second example I can share with you was that that by 1986, 1987, Zhang Zhongmo Morris Chang had to find enough start up money, seed money to store up this new company, tsmc. And he tried very hard to raise the money. Taiwanese government was able to offer a lot of support to ask the banks to loan money to Morris Chang and so on and so forth, right. But he was short of one quarter of the seed money. And then he even kind of delivered a briefing at Texas Instruments and Intel. But he didn't really get investment from these US companies. Eventually the final parts of the seed money was invested by Phillips. And the reason that Phillips Phillips was willing to invest TSMC in 1987 was because one of the kind of top person, top manager, chief manager of Philips Taiwan subsidiary was willing to support Morris Chang. And the manager's name is YC and he sometimes would just go for, go by YC Lo. And so YC Lo entered as a kind of entry level engineer at Philips in 1969. And by 1980s he was really the general manager of the subsidiary of Philips in Taiwan at that time and throughout the of the 1970s he was actually trying to persuade Philips to do IC wafer manufacturing in Taiwan. But the Dutch headquarters had never said yes. And so by 1985, 86, 87, YC Low heard that Moritz Chang was going to do icy wafer manufacturing in Taiwan. And he was really excited about this project project, because this was his dream throughout the 1970s. So he arranged the Dutch headquarters to finish the final parts of the investment to help TSMC to be built. And in the beginning years of TSMC actually TSMC had a lot of technology transfers from Philips. And then that was also one of the major reasons for TSMC to be able to kind of smoothly grow in the early years of the company's history. So this is an example that Philips as part of the IC packaging industry in Taiwan started in 1960s, really helped the founding of TSMC in Taiwan in 1987. Therefore, this dedicated foundry model was really only possible in Taiwan at that time because of all these contingencies and favorable factors working together. So this is my chapter 10.

[B]

All right, thank you Hong Hong especially tell us more about TSMC and also this kind of different kind of cooperation or connection with the different companies and how this company continue and expanded as well. And with that we Talk about all the 10 chapters and this is very very very rich book. And so we are congratulations again for publishing this amazing book. But we are just wondering what's next. So can you share with us what you are working on right now or what your next project will be?

[A]

Yeah, so I feel like I wish I am ready to share about my second book project but I don't think I am. So instead of talking about a big project, maybe I would just share with the audience about article that I just finished. So I recently finished a draft of an article called Teaching the History of Emerging Technologies in Information Age and hopefully it will become a chapter for a book added volume titled Technological Humanities Essays in honor of Ronald R. Klein who is my advisor at Cornell University STS program. And so this is a book to honor his accomplishment contribution to the the field of the history of technology. And I wrote an article about how I teach a course called Digital World at University of Minnesota Twin Cities. So this course is about history of the Aranet, the predecessor of the Internet and also about virtual communities, algorithms and ethics, facial recognition systems and ethics, and the history of artificial intelligence. All this kind of new technology, Internet enabled technology, social media. Right. And so I am trying to argue in this piece of kind of book chapter that historians of technology actually are very well positioned to provide insights, deliberations over critical issues for this ever changing AI era in which we live right now because we really are familiar with the debates from the past. So those from kind of knowledge about the debates in the past over emerging technologies will be able to help us, the society and the students to better understand how new technologies have been developed, imagined, introduced, promoted by individuals or organizations in our society. So I'm trying to emphasize historians of technology are really important in the debate of how to better use algorithms, how to better understand the role of social media in relation to democracy, so on and so forth in this contemporary time. So this is an article that I just completed and I'm very excited about it and really hope it will fly to be included in in the added volume.

[B]

All right, thank you Honghong, we are excited about this article as well and so we because it sounds really interesting and also thank you for letting us know more about the courses that you are teaching as well. And so we look forward to, you know, reading this article and many of your future works as well. And Hong Hong, I want to thank you for being on the show today and I really enjoy our conversation.

[A]

Thank you for having me.

[B]

And I also want to thank you our audience, for staying with us till the end. I hope everyone is taking good care and staying safe. And don't forget, there is an open access link for this book in the show note. Definitely check it out. I will see you guys next time. Goodbye.

[A]

Bye.

[B]

Sa.