Pedagogical and scholarly representations of collaborative writing and knowledge construction in technical communication have traditionally recognized consensus as the logical outcome of collaborative work, even as scholars and teachers have acknowledged the value of conflict and “dissensus” in the process of collaborative knowledge building. However, the conflict-laden work product of a Denver task force charged with recommending changes to the city police department's use-of-force policy and proposing a process for police oversight retains the collaborative group's dissensus and in doing so, illustrates an alternative method of collaborative reporting that challenges convention. Such an approach demonstrates a dissensus-based method of reporting that has the potential to open new rhetorical spaces for collaborative stakeholders by gainfully extending collaborative conversations and creating new opportunities for ethos development, thus offering scholars, teachers, and practitioners a way of reimagining the trajectory and outcome of collaborative work.

Since the late 1970s, technical communication scholars and teachers have largely agreed that technical communication’s humanistic character can be found in the field’s rhetorical nature and the social nature of discourse. Building on Patrick Moore’s efforts to rehabilitate “instrumental discourse” in the face of such general consensus, this essay argues that such notions of technical communication’s humanistic character, although unquestionably groundbreaking and crucial to the field’s sense of self and mission, remain too deeply indebted to traditional academic humanities’ and English studies’ constructions of humanistic purview, which largely refuse to accommodate technology, especially physical technology artifacts. Considering alternatives that recast the technology-humanities relationship and situate technology within a humanistic framework can yield benefits for both technical communication and English studies broadly construed.