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'?