From The Valley to The Hague

What if the next tech revolution doesn’t come from Silicon Valley, but from The Hague?

This isn’t just another lifelog. It’s a manifesto in motion. A real-time journal of breakthroughs, breadcrumbs, and bold questions. From Jony Ive’s $6.5B AI hardware play with OpenAI to Google’s smart glasses leap, I reflect on the shifting tectonics of innovation, the power games of global tech, and why lifelogging has become my daily ritual of meaning. Europe may seem like the old world, but in a world of dependency, maybe it’s time for a new launch point. Maybe it starts here. Maybe it starts now.

Mike’s Mind started as a blog and gradually evolved into what I call “journailing“—a blend of journaling and storytelling that now goes by the more familiar name: lifelogging. But for me, it was never about just documenting days or timestamping moments. It was always about momentum. About meaning.

It’s about creating a trail of ideas—daily if I can—so that when the world finally tips toward something new, the breadcrumbs are there. Not to point to me. But to what’s next.

And yes, it’s easier than ever. I talk. I drive. I think out loud. AI transcribes, storyvises, and sharpens the edges. But ease is just the tool. The real engine is purpose.

But that’s not why I do it. Or not the core, at least.

I’ve realized it’s twofold. Two forks, one stem.

1. A Breakthrough for Good

The first? I’m hoping for a kind of breakthrough. Not a personal one for fame or fortune or a Netflix docuseries. Put me behind the camera, not in front. Let me be the orchestrator, crafting clarity behind the scenes, where vision takes shape before the world even sees the stage.

The real breakthrough I’m talking about is for humanity. For the good. And since I’m not chasing virality or VC rounds, the least I can do is build a breadcrumb trail. Not of me. Of ideas. A kind of personal TED library without the spotlight. A “Text, Every Day” archive.

And lately, I’ve added visuals—symbolic ones. GenAI-generated, sure, but seeded with my own selfies. That’s a contradiction, I know. I just said I prefer being off-camera. But there’s something poetic about becoming your own metaphor. I symbolize, I share, I shift.

2. Too Many Ideas to Count

That leads to fork two.

I don’t have one idea. I have too many. Often about tech and its weird intersections with physics, design, and geopolitics. Sometimes with ethics, even mythology. I write science fiction, after all. I live it too, it seems.

Take today. I watched this interview that struck a strange chord—part elegant, part uncanny. Two minds, calmly sketching a future they might actually have the power to build. Jony Ive, the iPhone-MacBook design oracle. Sam Altman, the OpenAI oracle. And now they’re merging design with intelligence. OpenAI has officially acquired Jony Ive’s hardware startup, known as io, in a deal valued at $6.5 billion—with a B. Ive will now lead design and creative direction across OpenAI, with the aim of launching a new class of AI-integrated devices as early as 2026.

And it got me thinking again about that infamous AI Pin. Remember that thing? It flopped. But the point isn’t failure. The point is iteration. And you better believe that if anyone can design an AI device worth touching, it’s Jony Ive.

So yeah, I’m bullish on smart glasses. That word—bullish—always sounds halfway between hopeful and aggressive. Like optimism with muscles.

Apple teased theirs. Meta has Orion coming. And this week, we had a tech flood: Microsoft Build, Nvidia’s event, and Google I/O. Of all of them, Google impressed me most. Gemini AI in their glasses? Impressive. Even if TED Talks are becoming glorified product launches, what they demoed—real-time conversation, context-awareness, and display-on-lens—was straight out of sci-fi.

And here I am. In The Hague. In a Mercedes. Talking to Siri while CarPlay runs the show. I keep wondering: will Apple, Google and Meta all keep integrating into cars, homes, and eventually us? Do they want the hardware, or do they just want in?

And then there’s Microsoft. Sometimes I wonder—did they actually strategize the long game? They gave up on Windows Phone way back, even though I genuinely loved it. Clean UI, clever design. Still miss it. But what if that wasn’t just a retreat? What if it was a reallocation? A 15-year chess move. Let others win the phone war while they go deep into productivity, cloud, Copilot, AI chips, partnerships, and possibly—just maybe—a comeback in wearables and agents through Meta or something else. If that’s true? That’s not a pivot. That’s patience disguised as defeat.

A Different Kind of Capital

And where does that leave us here in the Netherlands—or in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East? Because no matter how much we pretend we’re autonomous, we’re dependent. Still. On San Francisco. On The Valley. That tiny little stretch of land pumping out global behavior shifts. It’s both magical and disturbing.

Less flashy, more principled. The political capital of the Netherlands. Home to the ICC. HQ to many cybersecurity and justice organizations. Coastal, calm, coded with a different kind of weight. Geopolitically and metaphorically.

And maybe, maybe—in the way New York was once the arrival point for European pioneers heading west—The Hague could be the launch point for something heading forward.

Because we can’t just keep importing ideologies, devices, and dependencies. We need our own systems. Devices. Clouds. Ethics. Frameworks.

That’s my last point, really. I resonate with Sam Altman’s original vision: OpenAI as a nonprofit. The struggle is real—you need funding, partners, reach—but the mission matters. And we need missions like that outside the U.S.

So if you’re reading this—from Lagos, or Lisbon, or Lahore—reach out.
I’ve got a framework. Ideas. A lifelog.
And maybe that’s enough to start.