In conversation with Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky a few weeks ago, the topic of what to call what she does at Yahoo! (essentially, finding solutions to ill-defined problems involving networks) came up. She and some of the people she works with were inclined to refer to it as network forensics or simply forensics. This puzzled me, since I didn’t see how legal matters came into it.
And then I recalled a different non-legal use of forensic reported to me some years ago: as a noun referring to a gathering with a formal program, such as a speech or a film.
So, two different semantic extensions of forensic(s).
