Category / idea

by Fadi Zaghmout

A reward and punishment VR system – imagining the future Black Mirror style


The future might be both, beyond our wildest dreams, and so much familiar where it manifests many of our beliefs and traditions. With the exponential advancement of AI and technology, it would be near impossible to predict what is coming our way.


But understanding the power of human beliefs and imaginations and how persistent it can be, and coupling that with the powers of our future technologies of AI, VR and censoring, let’s imagine the following scenario:


For those who still believe in heaven and in hell, who believe in reward and punishment in a world where aging does no longer exist and death is far more rare. You don’t have to worry!


I have a solution.


We can run a mini experiment and create the world you think is fair and true. To assist the angels on your left and right shoulders, we will create artificial invisible angels, planted on your shoulders to log whatever action you do. They will be ran by an advance AI that can asses every single action, collect data from your body and brain activities, and determine if the action should be logged in your deeds or sins records.


This can start any moment, from the day of your birth, or the day you subscribe to our service. It will also have a time limit. We recommend 100 years. After which, your judgement day will arrive. But don’t worry, we can do it in groups, or patches, so it can feel real, with a real judgment day for all. And we can keep the date a secret that no one knows.


On your judgment day, the AI will measure your balance and how it tips. It will determine if you have been a good person or a bad one. And accordingly, it will channel you to one of our afterlife chambers; the VR chamber of Hell or the VR chamber of Heaven.


In Heaven, you will be seated comfortably in a perfect room and you will delve into an experience of joy that you have never thought of. Your body will be monitored all the time to ensure your safety. Your mind will be constantly induced with happy hormones. And your imagination will be living the Heaven you always dreamt of and longed for. You will not feel time, because there is not time in Heaven.


In Hell, we will burn you “virtually” to atone your sins. You will be tortured to the highest levels your body can endure. We will repeat that constantly, every time till you lose your consciousness, and reset once you wake up again. All in a safe environment, with your body tightened into a comfortable chair and sensors that can guarantee you would never die.
Who is up for this? Add your name in the comments!


– This can either be a Black Mirror episode or a blue print for a sequel for my Heaven on Earth

by Fadi Zaghmout

I am a blogger and will stay a blogger – Follow up post


During the weekend, and reflecting on my last post “I am a blogger and will stay a blogger“, I came to realize that what I said isn’t totally true. I mean, when I wrote it, I felt that yeah, this is how I feel, and it sounds good, and it is right! But then thinking about it, I guess that it was tainted by my previous post where I mentioned “aging”, and I suppose that, unconsciously, my 40 years voice took over.

You know, they tell us that in our 20s we are haste, we are energetic, and we have big dreams. We believe that we can change the world and we are fearless about it. But then in our 40s, when we reach our defined “middle age” (I don’t think 40 is my middle, but anyway), we become more mature, more reasonable, we face reality and come to realize that it is easier to change ourselves, or adapt to the world than changing it.

That’s wisdom, isn’t it? But it also spells “giving up”. Like I am frustrated enough and I no longer bother. I don’t have the energy for this anymore. And I don’t care!

This is not me. It is not going to be in my 40s and hopefully not in the following decades. I still want to change the world. It was the reason I started blogging 13 years back and will continue a major drive for me to write. And while I do enjoy blogging for the sake of blogging, I still want to talk about what I feel unjust around me. I still want to champion sexual freedoms and body rights. And I still want everyone to believe that there is hope and that science is capable of defeating aging. I want to see everyone onboard, supporting scientific advances in biotechnology. And I secretly hope to have the chance to study bio-chemistry myself and contribute to the actual research (maybe in a parallel universe).

Having said that, negating the first point in my previous post. I will go ahead and do the same for the other points. I claimed that I no longer care about blog traffic and exposure. Mmmm, of-course I’d say that since I haven’t been blogging for so long, but then again, after every post, I find myself checking the stats! Who read my blog? How many people read it? where did they come from? How many Facebook shares? Any Twitter shares? I should admit this. I want people to read what I write, and I want you guys to enjoy reading it and share it with your friends and followers.

Same applies to “the heated discussions”. I claimed that “I don’t enjoy it anymore”. Which isn’t true. I love discussing what I am passionate about. I can go on forever. And while I admit that I have been avoiding getting into such debates on Facebook, I know that this avoidance has to do with the person I discuss with, not the topic itself. You just know that the person is hopeless and no matter what you say will not get you anywhere.

And in my last point in the post, I claimed that I don’t want to be a “fashionista” or an “Instagram Influencer”. The truth is that I don’t think I have it in me what it take to be a fashionista, and I don’t know how to become an Instagram Influencer. You know how much such people make these days? It is insane, wallahi. And if it was as easy as dressing weirdly to set trends, than I wouldn’t mind exploring that path. But it is certainly no easy, and I don’t know how these people have done it. Respect and power to them!

So yes, I blog because I enjoy blogging, because it is a learning tool and a meditation to me, but it is also because I wish to change the world, to communicate my ideas and discuss them, and also to gain exposure and maybe one day get the reach of an Instagram mega influencer!

by Fadi Zaghmout

Dividing gender based on height? My next project!


I miss blogging. It has been a while since I wrote anything on my blog, and even when I did, it has been more of an announcement or photos without much of written words or ideas or opinions like I used to do back in the days.

Keeping a blogging habit has been challenging in the past few years, and I don’t think that I am ready to overcome this challenge anytime soon, but I feel the urge to write something today and happy to use this platform. And as I have been doing lately, using it as a platform to talk about my writing projects, I feel like pitching the idea of the next novel I am working on, with a working title ‘Khait Hareer’ (A silk thread).

I am not sure how well the title goes with the idea and how well it will be weaved in the storyline. I have actually finished writing 9 chapters already and working on the 10th. It is kind of exciting but challenging, more challenging than writing my previous books as I am trying to imagine a fictional world. I have done this before with ‘Heaven on Earth’, and it was challenging too, but I think it was a bit easier, because in that book I tried to imagine the future, but in the new one, I am trying to imagine a parallel society.

So here is the pitch in simple terms. I am trying to imagine a society where gender is divided based on height, not sex. I know, it might be a tough sell, as not so many people understand the concept of gender and how much it is related to sex. For me, I understand that gender is a social construct, it is a sectioning system that divides people into two categories based on their perceived sexual organs. On top of the sexual division, comes a huge burden of dividing every single human attribute in an attempt to exaggerate the sexual organs distinction and make clear divisions between two types of humans – in our world today we call them men and women.

In a nutshell, we build on a single human characteristic our main human classification. And we divide all of the other thousands of human attributes, that are irrelevant to our sexual organs between the two types of humans we created. It is the most dangerous classification of humans in our history, one that most believe is natural and has always been their in every single human society. A division that clearly over simplifies the sexual organs shape and size spectrum and ignores the power of nature in brining in a wide range of manifestation to every single human attribute.

Sex is not different than height. The sexual organs come in all shapes and sizes. And if we can hold a knife and cut human populations into two sexes based of the state of development of male/female sexual organs, hiding a big portion of human beings that fall under what we call ‘intersex’, then we can use the same knife into cutting human populations into two heights (tall and short people) and hide those of middle height.

And yes, like what we do top our sexual organs distinction or dividing other attributes between two sexes, we can do the same, and divide human attributes based on the height of a person. In my story for instance, tall people will have to be thin and weak, while short ones will be thick, stocky and strong. It is not physical attributes that I divide, but also psychic ones, same like we do men and women. I even outline a dress code, a behavior code and strict gender roles that these tall and short human beings have to adhere too.

It is a very exciting practice trying to imagine how such humans would behave under these constraints. How they build their life and how they define things! There is a lot to explore and I might fell short in bringing up all of the angles such a drastic change might mean to us. It is a challenge that I decided to take, one that I am pleased with its outcome so far.

The most challenging aspect of imagining such society, is the language to use in describing it. I am writing the story in Arabic, and for those familiar with the language, it is pretty much gendered. For Arab speakers, everything has a gender, even unanimated objects. It is either a thing is feminine when it has the ta’ at the end of the word, or is masculine when the ta’ is not there. Yes, we have queer objects, but thats not the rule of the language.

In their world, their language is gendered too, and it is gendered based on height. But inventing such a language is beyond my capacity. I can outline it, and maybe try writing few phrases, but even then, no one would understand it. So I had to come up with a twist for the book, one that I hope will give you an “aha” moment and a smile once you get to it.

Not sure if I succeeded in pitching the idea, but if you got what I was trying to say, please let me know what you think. Try to imagine that society and let me know what comes to your mind. That would help me adding to the story.

by Fadi Zaghmout

100 year long term goals


Does optimism grow in people’s minds when it proves to be a good approach to life? It may have been the Secret’s law of attraction that have been bringing blessings to my life in the past few years, with a positive attitude towards life. Or, it may be a stronger tainted sense of optimism that grew inside me to color many little things happening in my life as blessings. I have reached to a point where I can no longer see boundaries that would limit my ambition or capabilities. A sense of confidence that if I really want something in this life, I can make it happen one day. The formula is simple, patience, persistence, positivity and time!

While I have some short term goals set for me like having my first novel Aroos Amman (Amman’s Bride) translated and published into other languages and finish writing my second novel Janna ala al Ard (Heaven on Earth). It is a life long goals that I would like to talk about here. Life long goals as in maybe goals that would be achieved in a 100 years time or so. That is something that stemmed out of writing “Heaven on Earth” and believing in the capabilities of science to cure aging. A new hope is born in me, a profound sense of empowerment that allows me to dream BIG.. real big.

Continue reading →

by Fadi Zaghmout

How do you perceive the progress of the world over time?


EGO vs ECO

This is a “Check in” post.

Sometimes we tend to assume that our views of the world is universal and that how we perceive things around us is a common sense that is shared by everybody else. That is far from real, and talking with other people would surprise you in many way, yet it usually fails to alter your own perception of reality or even pinch your own world bubble in your mind.

Having said that, and while I started by saying that this is a “check in” post where I would like to examine my own reflection of the state of world over time, I think that this is meant more as a re-affirmation of my believes rather than an attempt to shake them up and   address what may have been twisted by certain attributes of my characters or previous experience in life. Yet, what I love most about blogging is the ability to share ideas and reflect with other people in order to build my reservoir of ideas, information and reasoning!

The question is: How do you perceive the progress of the world over time?   

Continue reading →

by Fadi Zaghmout

IDEA: Digital Donation Box


There are times where you got hit by an idea that comes out of no where. Usually when I go and I google it, I found others who have already implemented it or talked about it in a way or another. In other times, I find it nowhere. Such ideas usually get me excited, but knowing that I don’t have the energy or time to pursue it, I find this blog space a good to shoot it out, discuss it with others, and maybe find opportunities to make it real.

Today while reading an article on Mashable.com about huge digital marketing trends you don’t afford to ignore, especially the part where it talks about the new Near Field Communication (NFC) which is used for money transactions and expected to get a mainstram adoption soon. It got tied in a weird way with a conversation I had this morning in regard of online donations and I suddenly saw infront of me the traditional donation boxes we usually see around supermarket cash machines transformed into digital donation boxes. A more stylish digital boxes where instead of dropping coins, one can knock his phone to the edge of that box and makes a donation. The box can reply with a digital thank you that can be a written message, a voice, or even a tweet acknowledging the donator!

Continue reading →