Bridging the Gap: The Moral Machine and the Pedagogical Shift to Hypertext
As an M.A. English Literature student at MKBU exploring the digital humanities, my recent lab assignment pushed me to bridge the gap between abstract moral philosophy and the very real algorithms that will dictate our future. This task was twofold. First, it required navigating the MIT_Moral_Machine, an interactive digital exercise that forced me to confront my own ethical biases in high-stakes, autonomous vehicle scenarios. Second, it called for a deep reflection on the theoretical backbone of our digital education, guided by a recorded session from my professor, Dr. Dilip Barad, titled "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext." Together, these exercises perfectly demonstrate what it means to transition from a passive reader of static, printed literature to an active, engaged participant in a dynamic and decentered digital world.
Navigating Algorithmic Ethics: My Moral Machine Reflection
What the Moral Machine Task is About
The Moral Machine is an interactive platform created by the MIT Media Lab designed to explore the complex ethical landscape surrounding autonomous technology. At its core, it updates the classic "trolley problem" from moral philosophy for the modern age, placing us in the position of programming artificial intelligence to navigate split-second, life-or-death collisions. The task presents a series of inevitable accident scenarios where a self-driving car experiences sudden brake failure. From there, it forces a choice between two tragic outcomes: swerving or continuing straight.
Each scenario introduces competing variables, requiring us to weigh the value of pedestrians crossing legally versus illegally, humans versus animals, children versus the elderly, fit individuals versus large individuals, and bystanders on the street versus passengers inside the vehicle. Ultimately, the exercise acts as a global experiment to crowdsource human moral judgment and map out how society believes autonomous machines should prioritize human lives when harm cannot be avoided. HERE is my result. https://www.moralmachine.net/results/1188022596
The Process and My Immediate Experience
Working through the Moral Machine was an intense, psychologically demanding process. Mechanically, the task is straightforward—you are shown visual side-by-side scenarios depicting an impending crash, and you click on the outcome you deem less catastrophic. However, executing those choices in practice feels far heavier. Being forced to make sequential, binary decisions about who lives and who dies in a matter of seconds forces you to rely on immediate, fundamental priorities rather than relaxed deliberation.
Every click feels like an active intervention where doing nothing is just as consequential as making a turn. The visual layout—complete with distinct character avatars, traffic lights, and vehicle trajectories—reminds you constantly that these abstract moral theories carry immediate, tangible consequences. Participating in this dynamic environment turned what would normally be a dry discussion on machine ethics into a visceral, hands-on decision-making process.
A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: A Comprehensive Breakdown
After engaging directly with algorithmic decision-making in the Moral Machine, the second part of this task requires us to reflect on the theoretical and practical framework of our digital education. In the highly insightful session "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext," Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad breaks down the digital transformation of teaching language and literature. The lecture is structured into three comprehensive parts, each addressing a specific facet of this pedagogical evolution.
Part 1: The Networked Teacher and the Decentered Classroom
The opening of the session dismantles our traditional reliance on printed media, challenging us to re-evaluate what a "text" actually is in the 21st century.
The Death of the Static Text: For over 500 years since the printing press, the printed book has been our primary companion. However, Prof. Barad classifies this as a "dead text"—it is unresponsive. If you tap a word on a printed page, nothing happens. We are now transitioning to hypertext, which is dynamic, cloud-stored, and accessible via standard web browsers. It reacts to our curiosity through hyperlinks, audio, and visual data.
The Networked Teacher: Analyzing pre- and post-COVID survey data, the lecture highlights a harsh reality: a vast majority of educators still lack a personal digital presence. To effectively teach digital natives, instructors must move beyond closed institutional websites. Establishing a personal blog, a dedicated website, or a YouTube channel is now an absolute necessity for the pedagogy of hypertext.
Decentering the Subject: Drawing upon Silvio Gaggi’s From Text to Hypertext, the lecture explains how digital pedagogy inherently decenters the author, the teacher, and the learner. Just as Roland Barthes declared the "death of the author," the digital era fragments traditional classroom authority. Without physical face-to-face body language and eye contact, learners and teachers must actively search for new ways to anchor their engagement and construct meaning together.
Part 2: The Digital Pedagogical Model and Language Tools
Moving from conceptual theory to practical application, the second segment provides a blueprint for executing digital language pedagogy. Prof. Barad proposes a specific "Salad Bowl" model combining flipped, blended, and mixed-mode learning.
The Foundation of the Digital Model: A successful digital classroom requires three distinct layers:
- Content Management Systems (CMS): Using cloud storage like Google Drive to archive all materials.
- Learning Management Systems (LMS): Utilizing platforms like Google Classroom to structure the learning journey.
- Digital Communication Links (DCL): Moving away from invasive platforms like WhatsApp and utilizing secure, unified channels like Google Groups to respect student privacy.
Solving the "Board Work" Problem: One of the biggest casualties of online teaching is the loss of the physical blackboard. To solve this, the lecture introduces the Glass_Board—an LED edge-lit glass pane placed between the teacher and the camera. Using tools like DroidCam to digitally flip the mirror image, the teacher can write grammar rules, draw stick figures, or map out plot points while maintaining constant, direct eye contact with the online learners.
Overcoming Network Barriers in Language Teaching: When teaching linguistics and pronunciation online, poor bandwidth can destroy a lesson. To counter this, Prof. Barad suggests integrating live browser captions and meeting transcript extensions (like Tactiq or Scribble). These auto-generated transcripts act as safety nets for students with low data and can even be used in assessment rubrics to see if a student's pronunciation is clear enough for an AI to transcribe accurately.
Collaborative Hypertext Workspaces: The session demonstrated live language generation using simple, accessible tools. By placing students into a shared Google Doc, a class can collaboratively write dialogues for an image, allowing the teacher to monitor everyone simultaneously and utilize the software's built-in grammar checks as instant feedback. Similarly, Google Sheets can be transformed into interactive, color-coded grids for structural grammar exercises, like converting active to passive voice.
Part 3: Literature in the Digital Era, Generative AI, and Assessment
The final and most profound section addresses how to teach the nuances of English literature through a digital lens, tackling issues like cultural anonymity and mythical aloofness.
Unlocking Literature with Hypertext: Traditional close reading often hits a wall when dealing with foreign imagery. Prof. Barad demonstrated how using Google Image Search acts as a hypertextual key. For example, looking up "Hawthorn's smile" reveals it refers to white shrub flowers (resembling splashed milk from the sky), and "Noon's blue feature" links back to a specific painting by Susan Noon. Hypertext visually opens up the poem in ways a standard glossary cannot.
Deconstruction via Google Arts & Culture: The lecture showcased how to teach complex literary theory using digital art archives. By navigating Pieter Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus on Google Arts & Culture, students can physically zoom in and scroll through the painting. This interactive scrolling forces the learner to look at the margins rather than the center—perfectly illustrating Derrida’s theory of "decentering the center" and deconstructive reading.
The Rise of Generative Literature: Perhaps the most striking connection to our lab work is the emergence of AI in literature. Through a live Google Form quiz, the audience was asked to distinguish between human-written and machine-generated poetry. The results were roughly a 50/50 split, with a majority incorrectly assuming a machine poem was human. This proves that generative algorithms can successfully mimic the complexity of postmodern literature. Just as the Moral Machine asks us to program ethics into an AI, generative literature forces us to analyze the creativity of an algorithm.
Corpus Linguistics & The Ultimate Assessment: The session introduces tools like the CLiC project (analyzing Charles Dickens through data patterns) before concluding with the ultimate goal of digital pedagogy: The_Digital_Portfolio. Traditional exit exams are insufficient for the hypertext era. Instead, students must curate, archive, and publish their ongoing assignments, video presentations, and interactive tasks (such as this very blog post) on platforms like Google Sites. This portfolio becomes the true, lasting assessment of a student's digital literacy and academic journey.
Conclusion
Ultimately, completing the Moral Machine task and analyzing the pedagogical shift from text to hypertext has been a defining exercise in my digital literacy journey. It is no longer enough for us to simply read about ethics or consume literature in traditional isolation; we must actively engage with generative algorithms and understand the profound moral frameworks we are programming into them.
The digital era has fragmented the traditional classroom, but it has also empowered us to become networked learners. By documenting these localized ethical decisions, analyzing my own biases, and publishing this reflection as part of my continuous digital portfolio, I am putting the theory of the digital humanities into practice. As we sail further into this digital age, embracing these interactive tools and decentered spaces is not just an academic pedagogical shift—it is a necessary evolution for any modern humanist.
Works Cited
Barad, Dilip. "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext | Language & Literature to the Digital Natives." YouTube, uploaded by DoE-MKBU, 15 Sept. 2021, https://youtu.be/c1H-ejKTGQM.
MIT Media Lab. Moral Machine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, https://www.moralmachine.net/. Accessed 1 Aug. 2026.
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