Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum (CHM) and Taiwan’s National Science Council (NSC) jointly hosted a reception at CHM’s Mountain View, CA, headquarters on September 27 to celebrate a ground-breaking initiative to collect digital oral histories from Taiwan’s information technology (IT) industry pioneers.
The reception was attended by over 60 high-tech leaders and government officials from the US and Taiwan, including Jack K.C. Chiang, director-general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in San Francisco, Joseph Yang, director of TECO’s Science and Technology, and Gwo-dong Chen, director of Science Education, National Science Council.
CHM president John Hollar said that due to the fact that Taiwan holds such a special position in the global computer industry and information technology revolution, the museum collaborated with the Taiwanese IT sector to start the oral history project with the help of the Taiwanese government about a year ago.
Ten Taiwanese IT pioneers were interviewed in the documentary including: Chintay Shih, chairman of the Institute for Information Industry, Chun-yen Chang, former president of National Chiao Tung University, Ding-hua Hu, chairman of Champion Ventures, Barry Lam, chairman of Quanta Computer, Ding-yuan Yang, president of Winbond Electronics, Matthew F.C. Miau, chairman of Mitac, Synnex Group, Stan Shih, former chairman of Acer, Robert H. C Tsao, former chairman of UMC, Johnny Shih, chairman of Asustek Computer, and K.Y. Lee, chairman of Qisda Corp. Earlier the CHM also interviewed Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation.
In addition to reviewing the development history of computers and information technology in Taiwan, the interviewees shared stories of their personal struggle, the future outlook for Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and the post computer era.
Professor Kuo Sy-yen of National Taiwan University and Professor Eric Ing-yi Chen of National Taipei University of Technology were instrumental in coordinating the oral history project in Taiwan. They told Taiwan Insights that the project is the first part of an initiative by the Computer History Museum to document the global IT pioneers.
Some of these stories are already available at the Computer History Museum’s website. http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/oralhistories/