I plan on talking about how we at Etelos support and advocate open standards, open source developers, and the impact that is having on the industry.

The marketing team did a very good job setting up the product.

The trigger is differentiation. It is the same thing that made us drop $5 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks as we abandoned Dunkin Donuts and their fried carbohydrates. They both served coffee, but if Dunkin Donuts started charging that much for their coffee we would not have bought it. We knew what coffee was and have come to expect it in a certain style and environment. Starbucks weren’t really selling coffee, they were selling something else. They were different. In our minds, it’s was not coffee as we expected it.

But there was one more trick; the moniker. Starbucks didn’t call it coffee, joe, or -even the exotic favorite- java. They called it something else. Indeed, I didn’t know what a Latte was until I had tried it.

Blogging, is the moniker that stipulated the experience we expected when we “blog”. Along with the environment that blogging software provided, these two innovations made blogging what it is today. Before, a person would “publish” content on a “website” that was run by a “webmaster”. You had to be cool, proper, or otherwise straight-up interesting for your thoughts to be “published”.

But now, those layers of complexity have been peeled off. You just be yourself, relax, say what you may. Your posts needn’t conform to any editorial style or a webmaster’s timeline. And that is a different experience that has a different name; a different moniker. That is the differentiator.

How could this post be useful to you? Think about what you are producing, is it different? should it be? should it go by a different name?

Around the end of the Ramadan of 1994 in Saudi Arabia my dad, for some reason, wanted to go traveling to Jeddah and Mecca. We were in Taif at that time and those three cities were about 100 km apart. His diabetes had progressed to the point where his eyesight was too weak for him to drive safely. I jumped at the chance to spend some father-son time with my dad. We set off on a trip together to go where ever he wanted. We spent the next two week hopping from relative to friend to memorable location. Along drives he told me things I had never heard him mention before. Stories about his youth, about his friends, and about life in general. I remember a moment when we just enjoyed listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen out of all things. The most interesting thing he talked about was a great grandfather of ours who made it his life’s work to collect every kind of musical instrument he could get his hands on. He was an enlightened explorer who journeyed the world and brought back many of its wonders. Sadly, this was frightening to many people. So after he passed away, his collections and library were mostly burned and thrown away. My dad said that with sadness in his voice.

On our way back to Taif, we spend a day at my aunt’s house. He went to the market and bought fresh arabic coffee and dates. He gave them to my aunt and told her it was for Eid. The next morning I got up ready to head home, but I couldn’t find him in the house. He woke up early an went by himself to a Quran reading he used to attend when he was younger in Mecca. I was worried a bit because he fasted every single day during Ramadan. For a diabetic it is perfectly fine to skip the fasting part. But he insisted on performing a full month of fasting. When he came back I was relieved and surprised. He had the biggest smile on his face. He was beaming with happiness that he had the chance to attend one of those readings again. Shortly after that we got in our car and headed back to Taif. “One more small trip please” he said. He wanted to go to the Holy Mosque in Mecca. “It’s the end of Ramadan”, I said, “its extremely overcrowded.” But he insisted and so we went. I was never able to drive up so close to the main gate of the Mosque before but that day it was clear. Our car was the only car in that big white marble expanse. It was a scene like that of the King’s carriage approaching the gate. We walked out of the car and into the heart of the Mosque. I could feel he was very happy to be there. Little did I know that we would both be back in that same spot in a matter of days.

We finally started the trip back to Taif. Taif is at a higher elevation than Mecca and Jeddah. The climate is generally much cooler. That’s where my mom and the rest of our family were. We joined them as they were preparing for the gatherings of Eid. The night before Eid everyone was busy with some last minute shopping. My dad and I were just hanging out together ignoring everyone. My mom walked in and suggested we had better get our clothes ready for the morning. We all got ready and looked our best for the Eid prayer at 5 am. Unfortunately I fell asleep around 4 am. So when it was time to go, I was deep asleep. Everyone in the house left and I stayed in bed. I heard them come home tired and exhausted. My dad laid his head next to mine and went to sleep. During Eid day, at least in Taif, after the early Eid prayer, people go home for a nap then wake up around noon time and start visiting each other. So you generally got to meet folks at least twice that day.

While I was deep in my extended nap, I was shaken up by my mom’s frantic voice. “Wake up!, help me”, she yelled. I couldn’t understand what she wanted but I immediately realized my dad next to me wasn’t looking right. He was confused and unresponsive. My mom was at his right, and I was at his left. I held him and I said “Dad, are you OK?”, but he just closed his eyes and stopped moving. He was absolutely motionless. I slowly noticed that my hand had been gripping at his, but now his hand felt empty. Like an empty glove. At that moment my mom and I looked at each other and dared not say a word. We didn’t want to say it or even think it for fear that if we acknowledged the situation it might come true. The window above his head was open and a breeze of air came in. Nothing made a sound. The silence was broken by the call to noon prayer. And there in my arms, lay my father. The sun was shining on his face as the cool breeze gently waved his hair. Amidst the prayer call to come to God, my mother and I knew he was gone. Still we stood there calming each other. “it must be a coma” I said, my mom nodded her head in agreement. But her eyes had already betrayed her.

When the paramedics arrived, they pronounced him dead. A heart attack. Diabetes had finally got him. That’s when it really hit my mom, she fell to the floor and the paramedics turned their attention to her. It wasn’t easy for her to lose her life long companion, the father of six children. It still isn’t to this day. I on the other hand couldn’t even shed a tear. I had been telling my self for a very long time that this day would come. There is no point in acting all surprised and upset. I guess it was my way of denying my self grief. If I knew that day was coming and prepared for it I had no right to feel grief. That exercise didn’t last long.

The relatives and friends that he met in the morning came back in the afternoon only to be surprised to learn of his death. It feels awkward to meet someone in the morning and find them gone by the afternoon. I kept hearing the words “but I was talking to him this morning” all day long. Our Eid was never going to be the same again. Every Eid, around noon time, my mom and I look at each other. We both remember that moment all too well. I silently say a prayer. I’m sure she does too.

He was born in Mecca, so we decided to bury him there close to his family. Before a Muslim is buried he is taken to a Mosque where all attendants get to make a prayer for him. We went back to the Holy Mosque in Mecca, where he and I stood there only a couple of days earlier. You might have seen the Holy Mosque on TV. It has a black cube at the center of a white marble court. That black cube is called the Kába, it was built by the prophet Abraham and his son. During the holy month of Ramadan and Eid, around 2 million people gather there. They put my dad at the footsteps of the Kába and the whole Mosque stopped for a minute to pray for him.

That night, after the burial, all our friends and relatives went to my aunt’s house in Mecca. She served them fresh arabic coffee and dates.

A very long time ago in Mecca, where my father grew up, they used to hire workers to build custom furniture. Besides their exquisite skills of carpentry, these workers also made cotton paddings and cushions to order on site. On one of these jobs, a peculiar incident happened that is ingrained in my mind. One of the workers was in a room by himself fluffing clumps of cotton by beating it with a long thin metal rod. Suddenly he came running out, frightened and thoroughly upset. He claimed he was being possessed by a spirit that kept punishing him for beating the cotton. Every time he lifted his hand to beat the cotton he would get punished again. After calming him down and assuring him that no evil spirits were lurking around, he went back and resumed his work. This time my father was watching. It turns out that as the worker lifted his rod high above his head, the rod touched an exposed electrical wire on the wall, thus delivering a dose of shocking punishment.

Why did the worker assume it was a spiritual possession? Electricity was outside of his Cognitive Diameter. This happened when very few people knew what electricity was. My grandfather’s house was one of the few in Mecca with electrical lights at that time. You might think the Cognitive Diameter is the same as knowledge, but it is not. Knowledge, in this context is simply knowing that something exists to some degree. The worker must have heard about the magical thing that lights up the night in some houses. However, for him, that thought had not become a viable explanation for his spiritual encounter. Even though he knew of electricity, it was well outside of his Cognitive Diameter. It is the same with abused spouses. They know they can seek help from the authorities, but they don’t. It is, for whatever reason, outside of their Cognitive Diameter.

It is therefore safe to assume that the wider one’s Cognitive Diameter, the better choices one makes. And the opposite is unfortunately true. The narrower one’s Cognitive Diameter, the worse choices one makes. Throughout history, we have seen this demonstrated time and again. Starting with Habeel (Abel) and Qabeel (Cane). Qabeel’s Cognitive Diameter was so narrow that he could only see Habeel as the favored one. In his world, Qabeel could not see Habeel as a brother, an ally, or even a human being. To him, in that tight Cognitive Diameter of his, Habeel was competition that had to be eliminated, so he did. Another example is xenophobia, fear of people from other countries. The natural product of fearing the unknown combined with a narrow Cognitive Diameter.

One particularly insidious and common product of a narrow Cognitive Diameter is the all too familiar slew of words ending with “ism”: classism, nepotism, and the most visible of them all, racism. No matter how homogeneous a culture of humans are, given that their majority share the same Cognitive Diameter, they will find a differentiating property among them and they will classify themselves. Racism, historically, has been simple to operate: find the minority color within the majority in the group, and you’ve got yourself a target. Of course, the width of your Cognitive Diameter determines who ends up becoming the target. The Arian white supremacist’s Cognitive Diameter does not go beyond his ilk and the dark man. Nothing else exists beyond that distinction. Thus, to him, it becomes of much greater significance what color you are.

I believe that we humans, left to our devices, will not rest if there isn’t an identified undesirable that satisfies and brings balance to our Cognitive Diameter. Hence my hope and yearning that we’ll find alien life on other planets. Preferably ugly and unfriendly. That would have an enormous positive effect on our behavior here on earth. Our collective Cognitive Diameter would expand beyond petty wars and squabbles over property. If the equivalent of one nuclear bomb per square inch were heading towards the earth today would the Israelis and Palestinians kill each other? Would the sectarian fighting and bombing in Iraq continue? Would access to Oil be important? Would skin color matter at all? If all of those folks realized what was about to happen, I doubt it.

The Cognitive Diameter is why I think democracy in the Arab world is not coming back anytime soon. The sectarian, religious, and ideological violence we see today is not new to Iraq. Right before Saddam Hussein took power, every group was out to get the other. The collective Cognitive Diameter in Iraq was such that every group could only see victory at the demise of the other. Those were their comprehensible options. Then one day, Saddam got up on a stage in front of an unsuspecting crowd and took out a list of names. The room was silenced as he read out loud the names of people in the audience whom he considered cowards and traitors to the nation of Iraq. As these individuals were being plucked out of the audience and life itself soon after, some were quiet, others were wailing. But all were hysterically frightened to their core. Suddenly Saddam became permanently within their Cognitive Diameter either by expansion or by insertion. The options suddenly morphed from competition to survival. Now that Saddam is no longer within the collective Cognitive Diameter, each group has identified the other as the new undesirable within its own Cognitive Diameter.

In our quest to feel safe and satisfy our ever escalating demand for comfort, we may overlook that what we want is either something we already have or do not need at all. We wake up everyday and want things to happen, so we work towards obtaining those results. We employ means and tactics to get there, but the meaning of the desired result, its Cognitive value, is in our minds only. For example, eating. You desire life and dislike hunger and death, so you perform the act of eating. The food itself does not care for your desired result. Not the spoon nor the plate. Not even your own lips, mouth, and digestive system. They are all merely means of getting to the goal of staying alive. That goal only means something to you within your Cognitive Diameter. There lies the solution to humanity’s problems. If only we could expand people’s Cognitive Diameter enough so that they may include every other human being on the planet, we might, we just might barely make it.