The New Dutch Times

We are the colony!

"You are the colony. You've found your way to the centre, and you're in control. This experience revolves around you."

This is what the new high priest of high-tech entertainment (he's sure bald and hip enough to pass for some kind of monk) Jay Allard from Microsoft says in the promo for the new Xbox 360, the specs of which were released today, on Friday the 13th. Dutch time that is.

His ant colony metaphor is quite powerful; it speaks to us as if we are all disgruntled worker drones, that have finally figured out how to upstage that bitch the ant queen; I guess it might be the ultimate individualist's wet dream. In that sense, this quote might be construed as the pinnacle of individualist marketing. (Maybe it's downhill from here!)

For me however, this quote signifies much more than just another buzzword marketing ploy that is easily forgotten once the product itself wins your heart. And that's because this time, the marketing ploy may actually hold more truth than the guy who's saying it seems to realize.

Let me explain. First of all, the Xbox 360 is insanely powerful: 1 Teraflops of CPU power, internet connectivity, plenty of imagery, storage and interfacing. All this, they say, will create the most compelling entertainment platform ever, heralding the 'HD era'. You, as consumer, will be in total control: it's as if Mother Ant is working for you now, instead of the other way around. And she'll be available in stores before Xmas!

Here's the funny part: in an ant colony, there is no such thing as 'consumer' or 'producer', as chaos mathematicians and other enlightened folks are finding out. All those cute little ants are just performing the thing they were made to do, in perfect synchronized harmony; and as 'flow' psychologists can tell you, that is not a very unpleasant state to be in. So there really is no need for a single ant to 'find it's way to the centre' to take control, because *every* ant has always been in control, each with their own little task they have no problem doing. It's called emergence, you should try it sometimes, it's great.

So, why do I still think the metaphor is so true then? Well, I think the Xbox 360 might have the potential to make us humans aware of this error in our reasoning: the illusion that most of us are destined to do a job we hate, and to compensate for it by getting maximum entertainment after hours, even if it means having to upstage authority.

Why will it help us get over that bullshit? Simple: inside the Xbox 360, lurks the ultimate productivity machine just waiting to break free: a pimped-out PowerPC processor that, apart from producing all these great new interactive experiences, has a very low-entry fee on developing for it with XNA. Heck, it can probably even run OSX (do I smell a conspiracy here?). I wonder how many Platinumverbs it can run...

All of this, in turn, can eventually provide us with the kind of creativity- and social networking platform that will help us produce way cooler stuff than any ant colony will ever be able to. But we will have learned it, finally, from them. Thanks Jay, for showing us the way.

Now THAT'S the kind of game I'd like to play :-)

I think this might happen in The New Dutch Times.

The Netherlands is Pro-Reason, Pro-Stewart

In last saturday's Anti-Bush demonstration held in sunny Amsterdam, literally two people in the roaring crowd were not so much mad at Bush as they seemed to be in total admiration of both reason and Jon Stewart, the smart and funny, almost Talmudic conveyor of that still very famous philosophical concept.

When asked for comment, Steven Kruyswijk, one of the carriers of the banner commented: "I just totally love this guy. He's my friggin' hero. He's on CNN, and I know I can trust CNN. I've been telling everybody to watch his International Edition later that same evening! I've been shouting like a madman!! Let's be reasonable! He told me to, you know." and then we managed to make him stop talking for a short while.

Kruyswijk further commented that he hoped that maybe with all this blogging going on nowadays, he might be able to get his message across: "I think the notion of  'Jon Stewart for President'  is a very powerful one. He should really do something with that. What else can he do to upstage 'The Colbert Report', which is so very much destined to crush him in the ratings?"

I think this might happen in The New Dutch Times.

photo: www.prikkel.dds.nl

Pass the Dutchie on the Right Brain Side

Let's talk about probably the first thing that comes to mind when most people think about Amsterdam: da joint. Or even better, the overall drug policy in The Netherlands.

Although we in Holland have been quite proud of our liberal standpoint when it comes to drugs, recently the drug policy has come under attack from some very well respected judges, lawyers and district attorneys, who say that the current system is putting so much pressure on the judicial system that it really isn't funny anymore.

Exactly half of the prison population in The Netherlands is occupied by drug-related offenders, and the courts are struggling to find the time to deal with more important legal stuff amidst the umpteenth Carribean trafficker each week with a colon full of merchandise. On top of that, there is no sign that the current drugs policy to minimise the number of users is really effective at all; more and more people are using them, especially teenagers.

In an attempt to open the debate on this issue, tonight 'Tegenlicht' (sort of the Dutch version of BBC's 'Panorama') aired an 1.5 hour-long special in which a unconventional jury-style court session was staged between the state and the 'Foundation for Drugs Policy', in which the latter pleaded for a legalisation of all drugs (yes, really!) in combination with a new, to-be-determined regulation system, focussing on 'product protection', similar to meat or medications inspections.

The jury was made up out of sixteen prominent Dutch people, amongst which a writer, a TV presenter, a feminist publisher, a former judge, a couple of Muslim representatives and of course the most mind-blowingly gorgeous, multi-talented  twenty-something girl we have in Holland: Fatima Moreira de Melo. She can SO call me anytime by the way. Google her, you'll see why.

Anyhoo, the plaintiffs made a pretty convincing argument about why we really should change things, because it's pretty darn obvious that the current system is simply not working. Although they didn't get very specific on the regulatory part, they made it clear that the judiciary system is a very stupid place to fight the battle against drugs, because it essentially is a public health issue first, crime second.

The state argued that the foremost objective should be to minimise the number of drug users, because drugs are always bad in every way and thus government should punish the use of it. They backed this up with some more paternalistic bullshit that you always hear from people that like to make a point by saying something is bad. I was soooo impressed.

In the end, the jury discussed at length on whether the big leap to legalisation should be made, with a definite vibe to it that if the future regulatory system presented to them made more sense, they would have passed the whole thing. Now, their verdict was still supremely Dutch: 50-50.

Here's a thought: why can't discussions like these never be about the real underlying psychological phenomena that are at play here? Why is nobody asking themselves or eachother WHY our teenagers are escaping to this drug-induced fantasyland? Or even better, why does nobody acknowledge the fact that sometimes, people actually have very positive experiences with drugs? (yes I know, Bill Hicks)

My hunch is that if we could come up with a regulatory system that actually makes sense, that honours and respects both the people that are interested in taking drugs, as well as their actual motivations for it, as well as the substances themselves, without bullshit, we could really turn this thing upside down in a good way.

What would be needed though, is a country that from top to bottom, isn't afraid anymore to talk about our real desires in life, not just the bad abstractions of them that non-compassionate capitalism, politics and the media have perpetuated since ages. A country full of people that collectively allow themselves to fire up all those parts of our brains that we normally keep dormant or try to repress, and do some constructive stuff with it together. Maybe a Dutchie would help?

I think this might happen in The New Dutch Times.

Update: the programme can be watched online here (sorry, no subtitles yet).

First Post!

Welcome to The New Dutch Times.

With this weblog, I'd like to take a shot at informing the English-reading blog audience (wherever you are) about what the heck is going on in The Netherlands at the moment, or more specific: what *are* The New Dutch Times.

I have a slight suspicion namely that The Netherlands might be headed for quite a spectacular transformation in the near future.

I'm not sure yet what this transformation is going to look like, or how the country is going to come out of it exactly, but I sure think it's going to be interesting enough to write some stuff about, as it happens.

That's it for now. Let's see if any of this is going to make sense somehow.