PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY 1

Running head: PAGAN POWER TECHNOLOGY

How Pagan Power utilizes Technology.

David "Toby" Meyers

NTC/360 - Network and Telecommunications Concepts

University of Phoenix

September 8, 2009
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Pagan Power Technology

The first Pagan Social Network was devised in late February 2003 (Yahoo Groups, 2009).

Its precursor the first internet founded Pagan Religious organization was brought to life in

HTML, October 30th 1993. Before there were any social networks that relied on the internet,

free servers and blogging websites. WitchVox and even MySpace used some of the ideas that

came out of Pagan Power Social so much so, that I was actually called to work for MySpace. The

writer of this essay David “Toby Nixon” Meyers is the founder, creator and programmer of

Toby’s Pagan Power, Church of Pagan Power, Pagan Power Social, Pagans for Gay Marriage,

Pagans on the Outside, Cannabis Pagans and Homeless Pagans all non-profit and organized and

utilized for free using simple HTML and free web space. This essay is about how we did all of

this and never paid a single dime to unite the first Pagan Social Internet Networking group.

Church of Pagan Power.

From October 30 1993 until May 2005, the Church of Pagan Power existed between three

different free web hosting internet services, (GeoCities, 2009; Angel Fire, 2009; Tripod 2009).

From any computer connected to the internet in the world that had public access, including

public and private libraries across the country and Canada, to log on remotely, update, and

program HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) web pages that helped connect people of faith

to each other. We helped test some of the first Java Chat rooms used to communicate over the

internet.

The Church of Pagan Power, decided that bulletin boards were best because, as is known,

if you log out or log in to a Java based chat room you lose any messages before you log in and do

not have access to messages after you log out. Church of Pagan Power utilized DHTML
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(Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language) I frames (Invisible Frames) and Java-Script pull-down

menus to create one screen viewing of over two thousand five hundred pages of essays on

Paganism and it’s interaction with the government and the public. It included an email based

instead of server form for becoming a member and it lasted more than 10 years. After 32 clergy

members, a broad membership world wide of almost three hundred we considered ourselves a

success.

Pagan Power Social

One day while we was trying to understand why a few people did not want to join Church

of Pagan Power. Someone messaged, “what if people don’t want to join some sort of religious

order with rules, but they still want to join this broadening Pagan community where can they find

groups like this without rules or orders” (Personal communication, 2002). The importance of the

website was that people connected and united; in effect Pagan Community. Somewhere between

it being a bona fied pagan religious organization (IRS, 2009) and having to have a strict religious

creed, not all pagans could or would join.

Pagan Power Social was implemented using Yahoo Groups (Yahoo, 2009) and was under

the so-called umbrella of Church of Pagan Power. Well if the problem is that not all pagans could

join and it was not very flexible in terms of what it could do in the law. A new organization

formed as a way to create broader Pagan community. This organization was Pagan Power Social;

its first incarnation was Las Vegas Pagan Power Social (Yahoo, 2009), which spread to more

than 20 groups in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which started a trend in Pagan Social

groups on the internet, as several hundred thousand now exist.

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Conclusion

Using nothing more complicated than a bulletin board a chat room and the power of

social networking, we helped start a worldwide revival of Paganism and community using

nothing but free public access computers and burgeoning information technology. Potlucks

happen every day of the week somewhere now; there are many Pagan Pride Celebrations in

almost every city in America. This is how Pagan Power utilized information systems; this was

how we changed the world, a little, at least for pagans.

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References

Angelfire (2009). Web Hosting.

Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Angelfire:

http://www.angelfire.lycos.com.

Anonymous (2002) Personal Communication.

Yahoo Groups (2009). Las Vegas Pagan Power Social.

Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Yahoo:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Las_Vegas_Pagan_Power_Social.

GeoCites (2009). Web Hosting.

Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Yahoo:

http://geocities.yahoo.com.

Tripod (2009). Web Hosting.

Retrieved August 21, 2009, from Lycos:

http://www.tripod.lycos.com.

IRS (2009). Exemption Requirements.

Retrieved August 21, 2009, from IRS:

http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html.