Nonsensemaking's blog

New Non-sensemaking Technique

Over the past nine months I have survived the ordeal of grieving the passing of my mentor and rock, Dr David Vaine (may God rest his soul), and buried myself in my work, hoping to continue his great work and extending it into the cutting edge field of Non-sensemaking®©™.

Through the use of several Non-sensemaking®©™* techniques including Story Making®©™*, Pattern Creation®©™*, Unappreciated Inquiry®©™* and Most Insignificant Change®©™*, I am proud to announce the development of another technique to assist people in making non-sense of our interactions and communication. The technique will shortly be registered as Non-contextual Tagging©^.

Non-contextual Tagging©^ has been developed to help people make non-sense of written communication through making the intent of the message abundantly clear for those not able to pick up on the subtleties of humour, sarcasm, innuendo, double entendre, irony, ridicule, mockery, taunting and blatant insults.

Through painstaking research into this issue I have chosen to intentionally ignore previous attempts at sarcasm punctuation including snark marks and scare quotes (not to be confused with quesclamation mark or interrobang) as well as diligent language comparisons undertaken through the use of Google Translate, I have chosen to "borrow" from several fields to develop Non-contextual Tagging©^ (NCT©^).

The NCT©^ follows similar guise to hypertext markup but dramatically deviates in the that it provides the reader with information that is non-contextual, only describing the type of humour that should be considered in making non-sense of the text enclosed with the NCT©^ tag.

The format for the NCT©^ tag requires an opening tag and a closing tag.

E.g. <humour> Sarcastic text/message/statement/note. </humour>

It is imperative that the closing tag is used as a lack of closing can lead to people not getting the puchline or confusing fact with sarcasm in later text.

The opening tag can be left off but only at your peril.

Nested tags are to be avoided at all cost as this has lead to me having a moment of light headedness where I needed a stiff drink, a powder and a good lie down for the remainder of the afternoon after attempting such an exercise on a tweet.

Tag extensions are also foreshadowed to provide for more specific non-contextual context.These would follow the format of <NCT name=value> and may include extensions such as sobriety_level. 

We have successfully trialled the <humour></humour> NCT©^ tagging sequence on several online forums, bulletin boards, usenet and email lists are are hoping to extend other tags including <irony> and <sarcasm> in the near future.

We are working with several particular sample groups setting up a control group, test group and a placebo group using non-NCT©^ tags. We hope to have our research presented at the 2012 Global Non-sensemaking Conference in Upper Slaughter, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL54, UK on the 29th of February 2012.

I am still working on the US English version of NCT©^ to allow for their mis-spellings.

Please provide your comments and feedback on this new technique under the understanding that they will be intentionally ignored if they do not agree with my perspective.

Your is Non-Sensemaking

Patrick Ham

Doctoral Candidate, Senior Associate, Research Fellow and Chief Non-Scientific Officer
Non-Sensemaking Pty Ltd

* Patent pending
^ Trademark pending

He will be missed

 

The sky has darkened and the world should stop to take a moment to reflect on the passing of a man well before his time (Obituary).

I have had the privilege of serving as the great Dr Vaine's research assistant for the last 8 years. During this time I have seen a fantastic talent suffer under the scrutiny of old world thinkers and the demands of academic proof.

Dr Vaine is a man who put himself in the firing line for his fellow man, to boldly go where others feared to tread. A man among men who gave his life so we may all live that much more less aware of our true position in the greater scheme of things.

The many late nights we spent together with me writing his papers and he putting his stamp of approval on my work, finding it worthy of his name, will stay with me forever.

I vow to pick up where the mighty Dr Vaine left off and keep pushing the boundaries of minimal impact KM and combine that with my own studies in the field of Non-sensemaking.

The world is an empty place now and I hope this martyr of his chosen field and passion can rest easily knowing his candle still burns bright in my eyes.

Patrick Ham

Senior Leading Head Research Assistant and Non-sensemaking Evangelist
Non-sensemaking Pty Ltd