The Divorce of Probabalistic Mathematics from Forensic Rhetoric (and Why This Matters to Technical Communication)

This paper discusses some of the founding work in the field of probabalistic mathematics (that of Jakob Bernoulli, the seventeenth-century Swiss scientist). By discussing similarities between Bernoulli's formulation of the mathematics to evaluate the probability of any given event and the forensic (or courtroom) rhetorics which Bernoulli had studied in school, this paper suggests that the foundations of probabilistic mathematics might well be rooted in part in forensic rhetoric. This is important to technical communication because it historicizes the origin of positivism in mathematical technical discourses.

Palmer, Terri. EServer (2001). Presentations>Lectures>Rhetoric>History

Under, Over and Around the Net: Interrupting the Uptopian Subect of the Internet

I would like to examine the claims that pure subjectivity, free of outside 'political' associations such as gender or nationality, can be achieved in electronic communication.

Palmer, Terri. EServer (1994). Articles>Cyberculture>Theory