Part Three Reading Guide
These reading guides will help you sharpen your thinking about the readings. Can you answer these questions?
The Programmer as Navigator by Charles Bachman. ACM, 1973
- Why does he begin with the revolutionary work of Copernicus?
- Bachman heralds the shift from a computer-centered world to what new point of view?
- Bachman describes a database programmer as someone who can probe and traverse what?
- In Bachman's view, what is the first function of database management?
- In Bachman's view, what is the second activity of database management?
- What is the clear difference between a file and a database Bachman finds?
XML in 10 points W3C, Revised 13 November 2001
- What are some examples of structured data?
- If you see <p> in an XML document, can you presume that this is the HTML paragraph tag?
Understanding XML by Dare Obasanjo, July 2003
- XML is derived from what legacy markup technology?
- What does 'platform independence' mean for XML?
- Which one is case sensitive? XML or HTML?
- What is the advantage of basing XML on Unicode?
XML and the Second-Generation Web by Jon Bosak and Tim Bray. Scientific American, May 1999
- What does it mean to construct information to be 'self-describing'?
- What is the implication of the fact that HTML has no tag for drug reaction?
- Describe the rule in using tags.
- An analogy: RDF is to Web data as catalogue cards are to ...
- Do the authors believe that RDF will have wide and immediate acceptance?
Orthography As A Fundamental Impediment To Online Information Retrieval
- Orthography is a branch of linguistics that focuses on what?
- Explain this statement: "Unpredictable text in a database is hard-to-find text, and
hard-to-find text undermines retrieval".
- How is the word "word" defined in the Brown Corpus?
- Give some examples that Brooks considers the work of 'verbal artists.'
Websearch: How the web has changed information retrieval
- What is the implication of the Web being a big, distributed document database and Web pages being HTML documents?
- What is the implication of the Web NOT being a database, but instead a network of rapidly changing presentations?
- Brooks suggests that 'web search' indicates something other than retrieving information on the Web. What is it?
- Discuss some of the empirical studies reporting on the rate of Web content rate of change.
- Why does Brooks claim that 'assembling Web content to look like a printed document is not a technical necessity, but a cultural convention'?
- What does Brooks mean when he concludes 'Web pages are presentation contingencies and server programming artifacts'?
Death of a meta tag by Danny Sullivan
- Describe the function of the meta keyword tag.
- What is a 'spam magnet'.
- What is Sullivan's advice about using the meta keyword tag?
Metacrap by Cory Doctorow
- How does Doctorow define 'metadata'?
- What is the consequence on metadata of liars?
- What is the consequence on metadata of lazy people?
- What is the consequence on metadata of stupid people?
- Explain what he means when he writes 'The conceit that competing interests can come to easy accord on a common vocabulary totally ignores the power of organizing principles in a marketplace.'
- What is the significance for metadata if your bald spot is really a 'solar panel for a sex-machine'?
New Rules for the New Economy by Kevin Kelly, Wired, Issue 5.09, September 1997
- What is the 'grand irony' of our times?
- Explain why 'dumb power' is what you get when you network microscopic silicon chips.
- Using the example of fax machines, what is the effect of more and more fax machines linked together?
- Explain the phenomenon of a 'tipping point' to Internet technologies.
- What are the consequences on bandwidth if Gilder is correct?
- Why is 'giving away the store for free' a new network strategy?
Justice Stevens, dissenting
- Justice Stevens regards the imposition of filtering on the 'other 93%' as a blunt nationwide restraint on what?
- What is the implication of the fact that filters examine text and not images?
- What is 'underblocking'?
- What is 'overblocking'?
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