Beyond the Printed Page: Exploring Hypertext, AI and Digital Pedagogy
This Blog is a part of Lab session on Digital Humanities assigned by Dr. and Prof. Dilip Barad sir wherein I will explore various digital tools like Moral Machine and the concept of hypertext in the study of D.H.
VIDEOGRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF MY BLOG
What Is the Moral Machine?
The Moral Machine is an interactive experiment that explores how humans make moral decisions in situations involving autonomous vehicles. It presents a series of hypothetical accident scenarios where a self-driving car must make an unavoidable choice between different outcomes. Participants are asked to decide which people or beings should be saved when it is impossible to save everyone.
The choices can involve different ethical considerations, such as saving pedestrians or passengers, younger or older people, humans or animals, or a greater number of people versus a smaller number. The experiment records these choices to identify patterns in people's moral preferences.
The purpose of the Moral Machine is not to determine a single "correct" moral answer. Instead, it encourages us to question how our values, experiences, assumptions, and biases influence ethical decision-making. It also raises a larger question about the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI): if machines are given the responsibility of making decisions that can affect human lives, whose moral values should they follow?
The Moral Machine therefore provides an interesting connection between technology, ethics, and human psychology. It shows that programming a machine to make an ethical decision is not simply a technical task. Before we can teach machines how to make moral choices, we need to think carefully about how humans make those choices ourselves.
From Text to Hypertext: Rethinking Language and Literature for Digital Natives Introduction
From Text to HypertextUnderstanding the Pedagogical Shift :
The second major part of the session focuses on the movement from text to hypertext. Professor Dilip Barad's reference material describes the session as a discussion of Language & Literature to the Digital Natives. The central idea is that contemporary learners encounter knowledge through interconnected digital environments rather than exclusively through linear printed texts.
Traditional printed text generally provides a relatively linear reading experience. A reader begins with one page and continues through a sequence of pages. Hypertext changes this structure by connecting different forms of information through links.
A digital text can contain connections to:
other texts;
images;
videos;
websites;
archives;
scholarly resources;
audio;
presentations;andinteractive activities.
Therefore, reading in a digital environment can become a process of navigation and exploration rather than simply moving from one page to the next.
Hypertext and Digital Natives
The concept of hypertext is especially significant for contemporary learners who regularly interact with smartphones, websites, social media, videos, search engines, and digital platforms.
Today's students are familiar with clicking, scrolling, searching, linking, sharing, and moving between multiple sources. Therefore, the classroom can also become more interactive and interconnected.
However, the pedagogical shift does not mean that printed books should be abandoned. Instead, digital technology can pla One of the most important theoretical ideas in the reference session is decentring. Professor Barad draws on Silvio Gaggi's discussion of hypertext and the decentring of the subject and applies the idea to digital pedagogy. The traditional centres of core content, teacher, and taught can become less fixed in a digital learning environment. ce the traditional text within a wider network of resources.
For example, while studying a poem, students can move from the poem to a historical reference, then to an image, a video lecture, a digital archive, or a scholarly article. The literary text becomes a starting point for further exploration.
Decentring the Teacher and the Learner
One of the most important theoretical ideas in the reference session is decentring. Professor Barad draws on Silvio Gaggi's discussion of hypertext and the decentring of the subject and applies the idea to digital pedagogy. The traditional centres of core content, teacher, and taught can become less fixed in a digital learning environment.
In a conventional classroom, the teacher is often positioned as the primary authority and the textbook functions as the central source of knowledge.
Digital pedagogy creates a more distributed learning environment.
Similarly, the student becomes more active in finding, evaluating, interpreting, and producing knowledge.
This does not mean that teachers become unnecessary. Instead, their role changes. The teacher helps students navigate the enormous amount of information available through digital platforms and encourages them to approach that information critically.
Digital Humanities and the Future of Learning
From Consumption to Creation
A major advantage of digital pedagogy is that students can move from consuming knowledge to creating knowledge.
Instead of only reading an essay or answering questions, students can create:
blogs;
podcasts;
videos;
presentations;
digital portfolios;
infographics;
collaborative documents;
websites; andinteractive projects.
This very blog is an example of that shift. I am not simply reading about Digital Humanities; I am documenting my own experience, interpreting the activity, connecting it with theory, and publishing the result in a digital environment.
Digital Technology and Language Learning
Digital tools can also transform language teaching. Collaborative platforms allow students to write, edit, comment, and respond to one another.
For example, shared documents can become interactive classrooms where students collaboratively produce paragraphs, correct language, answer questions, and receive feedback.
Digital transcription tools can also connect speaking and writing by allowing students to examine spoken language in written form. Such tools can support vocabulary development, listening comprehension, pronunciation awareness, and language analysis.
Thus, technology can bring together the four major language skills:
Listening + Speaking + Reading + Writing
Hypertext and Literary Studies
The concept of hypertext is particularly valuable for literature because literary works are rarely isolated from history, culture, mythology, politics, philosophy, and visual art.
Consider a poem that refers to a mythological figure. In a traditional classroom, the teacher may explain the reference. In a digital environment, students can follow hyperlinks and independently explore the myth, paintings, historical sources, videos, and contemporary adaptations connected to it.
This changes the question from:
“What does the text mean?”
to:
“What other texts, images, histories, ideas, and cultural contexts are connected to this text?”
The literary work consequently becomes part of a wider network of knowledge.
Artificial Intelligence and Generative Literature
Digital Humanities also raises questions about Artificial Intelligence and generative literature. Digital technologies can now participate in activities traditionally associated with human creativity, including writing poems, generating stories, analysing language, and producing images.
This creates new questions for students of English literature:
What makes a literary work creative?
What is the role of the author?
Can a machine participate in literary production?
How should we understand originality in the digital age?
How should readers respond to AI-generated literature?
These questions demonstrate that Digital Humanities is not simply about learning how to use software. It requires us to reconsider fundamental ideas about language, authorship, creativity, interpretation, and knowledge.
My Overall Learning from the Session
The combination of the Moral Machine activity and the discussion of hypertext gave me a broader understanding of Digital Humanities.
The Moral Machine taught me that technology can make our ethical assumptions visible. The hypertext session showed me that technology can also transform how knowledge itself is organised and communicated.
Both activities demonstrate that digital technology is not neutral. It influences how we make choices, how we access information, how we communicate, and how we learn.
The Moral Machine made me reflect on “How do I make a decision?”
Hypertext made me reflect on “How do I access and construct knowledge?”
Together, they helped me understand that Digital Humanities exists at the intersection of technology, human values, critical thinking, and the Humanities.
Conclusion
The journey from text to hypertext is not simply a movement from books to computers. It represents a broader transformation in the structure of learning.The reference session by Professor Dilip Barad presents digital pedagogy as a process that can decentralise the traditional relationship between teacher, learner, and content. Instead of treating the teacher and textbook as the only centres of knowledge, digital pedagogy encourages exploration, collaboration, participation, and creation.My experience with the Moral Machine added another dimension to this understanding. It demonstrated that digital tools can also make us examine our personal values and biases. The activity showed me that decisions involving technology are ultimately connected to human choices.
Therefore, the real purpose of Digital Humanities is not simply to use more digital tools. It is to use technology critically, creatively, ethically, and meaningfully.As a student of English Literature, I find this shift especially significant. Literature is no longer confined to the printed page. It can exist through hyperlinks, blogs, videos, digital archives, collaborative platforms, AI-generated texts, and interactive experiences.The future of language and literature education, therefore, may not be about choosing between text and technology. Instead, it may be about creating meaningful connections between them.
From text to hypertext, from consumption to creation, and from fixed knowledge to interconnected learning—the Digital Humanities invites us to rethink what it means to read, learn, interpret, and create in the digital age.
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