Class 17: Programming Adaptive Hypertexts

Held Tuesday, October 26, 1999

Summary

Handouts

• Writing madlibs
  • A CGI script for madlibs
  • One HTML ``front end''
  • Another HTML ``front end''

Notes

• We've rearranged the syllabus somewhat. There may be some inaccuracies introduced by the reorganization.
• Please get us thesis paragraphs by Thursday morning. Your thesis paragraph will be a one-paragraph introduction to your planned research paper.
• Jamal Rogers is speaking today at 4:30 in the Math Seminar Room on a search tool for the World-Wide Web. Is talk is non-technical, and you are encouraged to attend
• Mills Kelly is speaking Thursday at 4:15 in ARH224 on the Web in education.
• I will be returning your papers on Thursday (or so I hope).
• I hope you had a good break. Mine was busy. I
  • Walled off a doorway in our house
  • Put up a bookcase over that new wall
  • Wrote a 20 page paper and a 24 page paper
  • Graded exams (oh boy!)
  • Incorporated copyedits in 300 pages of my manuscript (only 150 more pages to go!)
  • Spent some time playing with my kids

Late Questions

These are the late questions on the readings. They are included here for posterity's sake. I've included short responses.

• Brett Simon is talking about a computer program that "uses" its users. Is this a warning towards the usage of subliminal messages to influence the way people think? This what? This program or this article? Blam! seems to be doing many things: commenting on interactivity; commenting on the ways that all programs manipulate their ``users''; perhaps even commenting on subliminal messages.
• Is Davidson's article optimistic or pessimistic about the democratic side of the Internet? Good, basic, question.
• Are people more inclined to have computers if they feel isolated? This question is in reference to the Monthly labor review article with demographcs I'm not sure that we can answer this with that article alone.
• Is Mr. Bungle (a rape in cyberspace) akin to Eric Swenson (producer of the BLAM! series)? Or is there a fundamental diference in that BLAM users all paid for the service to be manipulated? An interesting question, but not one that we can answer from the readings.
• (Speculation, probably not acceptable) What accounts for the tremendous size of the computer owning Asian demographic? My biases lead me to believe that many Asian-American families do whatever they can to support their children's educations. Since computers are being hailed as a great learning tool, families are buying them. One might also consider expected demographic information about Asian-Americans (income, geographic location, etc.).
• (Mean Machine) Wouldn't producing a cd like Blam!1 discourage major software companies from hiring you? How can he get a job at Pace University if he creates software as it is described in the article? Not a particularly deep question, but clearly one that concerns you. Most places care that you have appropriate skills. I certainly appears that the designers of Blam! were skilled multimedia developers.
• (Profile) Why was the ownership of computers measured by region? Why is that a relevant variable? Why not? It's easy data to collect. I agree that it may not be useful for our purposes, but it may be useful for others'.
• If a community feels threatened by having hate groups, as the Beckles article suggests, why aren't they making their own website that would come up on a websearch before the website of the hate groups? Interesting question, but not one we can easily answer.
• I agree that having hate groups on the Internet is a bad thing - but, how could the Internet ever be censored? Who has the right say what should or shouldn't be censored? Don't most things offend someone somehow? (I'm not saying I agree with the implications of the last question it'd be fun to talk about) More an argument against censorship than a question.
• If the Internet is such a breeding ground for destructive elements of society to grow and get stronger, why are we advocating that children get on computers and the Internet at earlier and earlier ages? Could not be argued based on the readings.

Lab

In a short lab, we'll look at how to write CGI scripts for the once-popular (and possibly still popular) Madlibs game. I'd prefer to have discussion first, but scheduling dictates that we use the MathLAN first.

Term Paper

As we've suggested in the past, you will be expected to write a term paper for this class (about six double-spaced pages). The paper can be about anything you like, as long as it has some substantial relation to hypertext. I expect that most papers will be ``hypertext and X'', but other topics are okay, too. Your draft introduction (intended to get you thinking) is due on Thursday. Your annotated bibliography (at least ten items, at least five of which are not Web pages) will be due the following Thursday.

Adaptive Hypermedia

In many of our readings, we've seen claims that hypermedia should ``adapt'' to the reader, given information about the reader. How might you use the stuff we did in lab today to build appropriately adaptive hypertexts?

Looking at the Code

Let's look at the program code for the Web pages and CGI scripts. What does each part do?