As someone who both liberally applies snark and sarcasm to everyday communication, and often has trouble recognizing social and non-verbal cues*, the research presented in this paper is really very interesting to me.

The research describes a “novel Semi-supervised Algorithm for Sarcasm Identification” in online user-generated content (this study made use of Amazon product reviews) which is, in effect, an automated piece of software which is able to, once given a baseline to work from (the “semi-supervised” bit), recognize sarcastic content in writing with a reported seventy-seven percent accuracy rate.

I personally think this is very cool; and not just from the “wow, somebody created a computer program that learned to understand nuance!” perspective, which, you have to admit, is pretty damned neat by itself.

Really, though, this sort of pure research could lead to a lot of interesting technology, like computer interfaces that respond to non-standard voice commands (think J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man films), more accurate and context-sensitive search functionality, and perhaps most beneficially, tools that could help people with problems like Autism spectrum disorders learn to better recognize nuance and tone in verbal and written communication, which for some people, could be a tremendous help for navigating successfully in everyday life.

Not that I think we as a society will manage to completely invalidate Poe’s Law any time soon, but I think it’s kind of cool that with more study, this could potentially lead to a real, honest-to-goodness Bullshit Detector™ someday.

oh, and The song “Hot Shot City” was particularly good.

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* -I’ve often wondered that if Asperger’s had been listed in the DSM-IV prior to 1994, whether I’d have been diagnosed as high functioning at some point as a kid. I’m not saying it would be a good or accurate diagnosis, though I definitely self-identify with several of the common symptoms of the disorder.