10 Biggest Playing Field Levelers
Joshua Bleier – EdTec 795B
- Gandhi’s non-violent protests lead to significant political reform in South Africa & India, 1914 - 1947.
- Non-violent civil rights protests of the 1950's and 60’s, lead by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. bring about significant societal changes, the beginnings of social justice and recognition of the benefits of diversity.
- Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed”, written in 1965, forces radical changes in how automobiles are designed and safety is manufactured into cars.
- Greenpeace protests to U.S. nuclear testing in ecologically fragile Amchitka in 1971 brings about an end to testing there, and the birth of a movement focused on critical environmental & social issues.
- Xerox PARC brings out Smalltalk, an Object-Oriented approach to software development that radically changes how code is conceptualized and written.
- Xerox PARC brings a graphical way of looking at the User Interface through “WIMP” and the STAR personal computer 1981.
- GNU Software, later developing into the Free Software Foundation, responds to the ubiquity of proprietary software with the development of free, open-source software tools and the concept of CopyLeft (1983-85).
- 1999 WTO Ministerials in Seattle are brought to a standstill by union, environmental, and social (NGO) protesters.
- Sarbannes-Oxley, a set of rules & regulations meant to make executives accountable for corporate malfeasance, is passed into law in 2002, as a direct response to the criminal activity at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing & Adelphia.
- Developing countries, let by Venezuala and emboldened by the success of NGOs and protesters to disrupt the 1999 Ministerials, exert greater pressure during the 2005 WTO in Hong Kong.
Last
updated February 7th, 2006 |