40 years ago the first remote connection between computers ushered in the age of the internet. On October 29, 1969, a computer lab at UCLA connected to the Stanford Research Institute, and then continued to spread out and connect with computers across the planet. The internet and its ability to connect the entire world and share understanding and knowledge is the most profound technology ever invented for creating world peace.

The internet is a technology whose benevolent uses far outweighed any military application alone. It was originally called ARPANET, and was a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense established in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik. Its mission was to keep U.S. military technology more sophisticated than that of any other nation. They were sourced with creating the technology, then allowing military and civilian use of these "most sophisticated" tools. One of the early projects was the study of space. In 1960, all of its civilian space programs were transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the military space programs to the Air Force. Shortly after that, ARPA's investment in information technologies and networking computers would lead to the creation of the internet.

ARPA, now called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is no longer directly involved with the running of the internet. As the internet grew into a worldwide project, its management was handed over to the U.S. government-run Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann). After years of criticism from the rest of the world, the U.S. government eased its control over Icann, signing an agreement which came into effect on October 1, 2009 and putting the control of Icann under the scrutiny of the global "internet community". Less than a month later, the internet regulator voted to end the exclusive use of English scripts, a policy that is about to transform the online world make the internet far more global.

The board of Icann's annual meeting in Seoul this week formally approved plans to allow non-Latin-script web addresses for the first time, allowing domain names in Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and other scripts. More than half of the 1.6 billion people who use the internet speak languages with non-Latin scripts. The move is being described as the biggest change to the way the internet works since it was created 40 years ago. The first Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) could be in use next year.

Below is a picture of the router at UCLA used to make the first Internet connection.

Mother's Day has its origins as a peace holiday, so it's appropriate that this year's How Weird Street Faire (a peace celebration) occurs on Mother's Day. It is also fitting that How Weird is on May 10th this year, as the first formal Mother's Day was observed on May 10th.

The history of Mother's Day is rooted in peace. In 1858, Ann Jarvis, a young mother from West Virginia, started organizing Mother's Work Days. These were initially focused on improving sanitary conditions. After the Civil War, they focused on reconciling former enemies of the Union and Confederacy, and honoring mothers who had lost family in the war.

Inspired by the work of Ann Jarvis, and the traditional British day of Mothering Sunday, social activist Julia Ward Howe championed the cause of a national day for mothers, to unite women against war. Jarvis was popular at the time as the author of the words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic". She was horrified by the death and suffering of war, especially the recent Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. By 1873, women in 18 cities across America celebrated Mother's Day for Peace. While Julia Ward Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace, she sowed the seeds of a national day for mothers.

When Ann Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis took over the task of creating a memorial day for mothers. The first Mother's Day service was celebrated on May 10, 1908 at the Grafton, West Virginia church where Anna's mother had taught Sunday School. The holiday was intended to be a sacred day. It quickly caught on and spread throughout the country. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to make it an official holiday. And then on May 8, 1914, the U.S. Congress passed a law designating the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Unfortunately, the holiday was soon coopted by commercialization. Anna Jarvis was devastated, and spent all her inheritance and the rest of her life fighting what she saw as an abuse of the sacred celebration. She stated at one point that she "wished she would have never started the day because it became so out of control." Well, now it's time to take back Mother's Day for peace.

From the words of Julis Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation...

"From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: 'Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.' Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession."

So in honor of all mothers, and all those affected by war, we gather in peace.

(Mothers Day for Peace)


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The World Peace Through Technology Organization recently affiliated with a technology user group, the Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group (CDMUG), to help inspire community-building and world peace through advanced technological tools.

The Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group organized Drupal Camp Chicago's (DCC) educational and philanthropic activities. Drupal Camp Chicago was held October 24-25, 2008, with over 180 attendees. The program included the second Code for a Cause event.

Code for a Cause (C4aC) volunteers work in small teams on specific real-world applications, addressing identified needs within the non-profit community. Projects are led by CTC staff that have years of experience working on non-profit technology projects. C4aC creates innovative applications for non-profit organizations that would have difficulty funding such robust projects by themselves.

Code for a Cause is a Chicago Technology Cooperative (CTC) project that brings together volunteer web developers and designers to build sophisticated social web sites and applications for small non-profit organizations, using the Drupal content management system and other free and open source software.

Drupal is a leading open source content management system, which allows anyone to create and organize online communities with no programming expertise. In fact, the World Peace Through Technology Organization web site (peacetour.org) is built with Drupal.

During Drupal Camp Chicago, Code for a Cause volunteers built a prototype website for Skoolade.org, an online repository of educational resources for parents and teachers working with students with autism. The site allows users to upload, categorize, rate, and share autism resources.

The inaugural Code for a Cause event was held in conjunction with the 2008 Flourish Conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Code for a Cause Hack-a-thon was a two day coding sprint where Flourish attendees had the opportunity to contribute to small development projects to create applications for local non-profit organizations and community groups.

The event was extremely successful with approximately two dozen active participants and another 50-60 observers who visited the Hack-a-thon to learn more about the use of open source software in the non-profit/volunteer sector. The participants developed an online homeless shelter search for Chicago, a prototype website for a non-profit organization called Green World Campaign, an online survey management and reporting tool, and a screen scraping tool for website migrations.

The World Peace Through Technology Organization is excited to be working with the Chicago Drupal Meet Up Group and supporting Code for a Cause. We hope to bring some events to the west coast soon.

The How Weird Street Faire CD Vol. 1 was produced in 2003 from songs provided by artists who have played at the Faire. The album is a diverse collection of electronic music, with the intention of inspiring peace.

01. Om Tare Tu Tare - by Irina Mikhailova & Todd Christensen

02. Let The Rumpus Begin - by Adam & Eve

03. Bulge - by Shakatura

04. Give Peace A Trance - by Quasar

05. Mir - by Penta

06. Peace - by Ocelot

07. Biomagnetic Podes - by Biodegradable

08. Fortuna (4:20 Myx) - by Kode IV

09. Green Shake - by Waterjuice

10. Ananda Enchanted - by Bassnectar

Feel free to listen to the songs or download them. If you want to give thanks, please support the individual artists and the WPTTO. We want to thank all of the talented and creative artists who have shared their work with the world. Art is a very effective way to communicate, teach, and inspire.




The album is licensed through Creative Commons.
Use requires: Attribution, Non-Commercial Application, and Share Alike Licensing.