By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
The two most recent lectures in the 2013 Fairhaven Lecture Series, “Turning Point,” focused on developments that have occurred during the past 30 years representing very different yet equally profound changes to American life – the growth of the Internet and the passage and implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
On Nov. 11, Carol Scovotti, associate professor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, took her audience on a guided tour of the rapid development of the Internet, beginning in the early 1960s with early ideas leading to the first connection in 1969 of three universities in California and one in Utah and ending with the global prominence of the Internet today that 40 percent of the world’s population of 7.1 billion people now use.
The development of the “chip” (microprocessor) in the 1970s promoted the early growth of the Internet, including the first international connection in 1973.
The growing popularity of personal computers in the 1980s, along with Al Gore’s request for a plan for an educational and research network, ushered in the exponential growth of the Internet and its widespread commercialization in the 1990s, including the first on-line order in 1994 with Pizza Hut and the emergence of on-line banking and stock trading in 1999.
Discussion about disabilities continues
In contrast to Scovotti’s lecture on the internet that started with developments in the 1960s, Elizabeth Watson’s talk on “The Last Frontier of Civil Rights: The Americans with Disabilities Act” began with the founding of the American School for the Deaf in 1817 as the first step in the long journey to the passage of the American with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Watson serves as the director of the Center for Students with Disabilities at UW-Whitewater.
Watson offered an historical context to her topic around the passage and sometimes delayed implementation of several important pieces of federal legislation, including the Smith-Sears Veterans Rehabilitation Act (1918), the Social Security Act (1935) and the Architectural Barriers Act (1968).
“We’ve used legislation as a means of engaging and creating civil rights opportunities for individuals with disabilities,” Watson said.
Read more about the past two lectures in the Nov. 21 issue of the Whitewater Register.
Up next
The next lecture in the 2013 Fairhaven Lecture Series will be presented at 3 p.m., Monday, Nov. 25 by E. Peter Wagner, associate professor of political science at UW-Whitewater, entitled, “The Fall of Communism and the Creation of a New World Order.”
All lectures are free and open to the public and are held on every Monday through Dec. 2 at 3 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of Fairhaven Retirement Community, 435 W. Starin Rd., Whitewater. Street parking is adjacent to the building.
Links to videos of lectures, including those from prior series, can be found at http://www.uww.edu/contedu/fairhaven.
