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Communication theory is also known as informationtheory and is designed by Claude Shannon and WarrenWeaver. Communication theory deals with how messageare communicated between two entries: sender andreceiver. It identifies the means, methods, andelements of communication and feedback. Information ispassed from one place to another, and it is theprocess of transmitting this information based on theform, structure, functions, and effects of theinformation.
Stimulating prior-knowledge can enhance communicationand their understanding based on experience andculture. For example getting an international driverslicense.
Shannon and Weaver’s theory has great historicalsignificance. Their model helped search for otherphysical representations of communication. Most peopleworking in the field of human communication hadtrouble following the mathematics of Shannon’s theory,but Weaver’s translation and commentary were easy tounderstand. Since the discipline was ripe for a modelof communication and information theory was there tofill the need, its source-channel-receiver diagramquickly became the standard description of whathappens when one person talks to another. Many of theterms we use today originated with Shannon andWeaver—message fidelity, multiple channels,information loss, source credibility, and feedback. (Griffin, 1997).Claude Elwood Shannon
Shannon was born in Petoskey, Michigan, on April 30, 1916. His father, Claude Sr (1862-1934), a descendant of early New Jersey settlers, was a businessman and for sometime, the Judge of Probate. His mother, Mabel Wolf Shannon (1890-1945), daughter of German immigrants, was a language teacher and for a number of years Principal of Gaylord High School, in Michigan.
The first sixteen years of Shannon's life were spent in Gaylord, Michigan, where he attended public school, graduating from Gaylord High School in 1932. Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics, and at home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a telegraph system to a friend's house half a mile away. While growing up, he worked as a messenger for Western Union. His childhood hero was Thomas Edison, who he later learned was a distant cousin. Both were descendants of John Ogden, an important colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people.
In 1936 he accepted the position of research assistant in Department of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT he became famous for his master’s thesis publication in 1937, at the age of 21 years, for being the founder of information theory and both digital computer and digital circuits wherein he articulated that electrical application of Boolean algebra could construct and resolve any logical, numerical relationship, It has been claimed that this was the most important master's thesis of all time.
.(Wyner, 1998; Wikipedia, 2007)
Warren Weaver
Weaver was born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, on July 17, 1894 and died in New Milford, Connecticut, on November 24, 1978. He was an American scientist, mathematician, and science administrator. He is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of machine translation, and as an important figure in creating support for science in the United States.
He graduated in 1919 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degree in civil engineering and mathematics. He then became an assistant professor of mathematics at Troop College (soon to be re-named the California Institute of Technology) before returning to teach mathematics at Wisconsin (1920-32). Weaver married Mary Hemenway, one of his fellow students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a few years after their graduation. They had a son, Warren Jr., and a daughter Helen.
As the director of the Division of Natural Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, and science consultant, and vice president at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, his chief researchers were in the problems of communication in science and in the mathematical theory of probability and statistics.
At the Rockefeller Foundation, he was responsible for approving grants for major projects in molecular engineering and genetics, in agriculture (developing new strans of wheat and rice), and in medical research. During World War II, he was seconded from the Foundation to head the Applied Mathematics Panel at the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, directing the work of hundreds of mathematicians in operations research. He was therefore fully familiar with the development of electronic calculating machines and the successful application of mathematical and statistical techniques in cryptography.
He was co-author with Claude Shannon of the land mark work on communication. The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949, Urbana: University of Illinois Press). While Shannon focused more on the engineering aspects of the mathematical model, Weaver developed the philosophical implications of Shannon’s much larger essay (which forms about 3/4 th of the book).
(The University of York, 2007; Wikipedia, 2007)
Information source : Is the starting place where the idea/message originates.
Message : Message means the transmission of ideas, content, elements, treatment, structure, code, transmitted as symbols.
Transmitter/encoder/sender : Is responsible for encoding and transmitting messages/ideas using symbols. Includes oral, written, electronic, or any other kind of ‘symbolic’ generator-of-messages depending on their communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social system, and culture.
Signal : Any communication that encodes the message.
Channel/medium : Choice of media (voice-phone, television, printed words) and choice of form within media (story telling, direct description, interrogation, degree of engagement). Here noise can interfere with communication.
Received signal : the communication that is received in a signal form.
Receiver/decoder : Is responsible for accepting, decoding, and determining the meaning of messages depending on their communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social system, culture.
Message : perceived as symbols
Destination : Is the final target where the idea/message concludes.
Noise source: Noise is the enemy of information. ForShannon and Weaver, noise is more than an irritatingsound or static on the line. It is anything added tothe signal that’s not intended by the source. Anyadditional signal that interferes with the receptionof information is noise. For example, noise can besmudged newsprint, a visual movement that distractsthe listener, a background noise in the immediatesurroundings, a noisy channel (a cracklingmicrophone), or the organization and semantic aspectsof the message (syntactical and semantically noise).
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Communication Theory Implications
Implications:"When I talk to you, my brain is the information source, you’re the destination;
my vocal system is the transmitter, and your ear and the associated eighth nerve is the receiver".
Symbolic communications are the things that we have given meaning to and that represent a certain idea we have in place, for example, the American flag is a symbol that represent freedom for the Americans themselves, or imperialism and evil for some other countries (Wikipedia, 2007).
Examples of parts:
Information source: sequence of letters as in a telegraph of teletype system
Transmitter:
You can see it. You probably guess that it's a language, may be even that it's Arabic. You probably don't understand it, though. In fact, it is Arabic and it does mean (but nothing very interesting). My message, encoded to you in that short sentence, cannot be decoded by you. You have the appropriate receiving equipment, but no decoder. You don't understand the code.
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Pulikkoonattu, R, & Weisstein, E. W. (2001). Math world biography of Shannon, Claude Elwood.
Shannon, C. E. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, 379–423, 623–656.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. The University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois.
Shannon, C. E., (1949). Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems,'' Bell System Technical Journal, 28, pp. 656-715. ``The material in this paper appeared originally in a confidential report `A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography', dated Sept. 1, 1945, which has now been declassified.'
Shannon, C. E., (1949). Communication in the Presence of Noise,' Proceedings Institute of Radio Engineers, 37, pp. 10-21. (Received July 23, 1940 [1948?].) Reprinted in D. Slepian, editor, Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory, IEEE Press, NY, 1974. Reprinted in Proceedings Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Vol. 72 (1984), pp. 1192-1201.
Shannon, C. E., (1949). Review of Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener,'' Proceedings Institute of Radio Engineers, 37, p. 1305.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Reprinted (and repaginated) 1963.
Shannon, C. E., (1950). Programming a Computer for Playing Chess, Philosophical Magazine, 41 (7), 314.
Shannon, C. E., (1950). Recent Developments in Communication Theory,' Electronics, 23, pp. 80-83.
Shannon, C. E., (1955). Game Playing Machines,' Journal Franklin Institute, 260, pp. 447-453.
Shannon, C. E., (1955).`The Rate of Approach to Ideal Coding (Abstract),' Proceedings Institute of Radio Engineers, 43, p. 356.
Shannon, C. E., (1960). Two-Way Communication Channels, Proceedings Fourth Berkeley Symposium Probability and Statistics, edited by J. Neyman, Univ. Calif. Press, Berkeley, CA, 1, pp. 611-644. Reprinted in D. Slepian, editor, Key Papers in the Development of Information Theory, IEEE Press, NY, 1974.
Shannon, C. E., (1963). Computers and Automation: Progress and Promise in the Twentieth Century,' Man, Science, Learning and Education. The Semicentennial Lectures at Rice University, edited by S. W. Higginbotham, Supplement 2 to Vol. XLIX, Rice University Studies, Rice Univ., pp. 201-211.
Shannon, C. E., (1963). Papers in Information Theory and Cybernetics (in Russian), Izd. Inostr. Lit., Moscow, pp. 824 Edited by R. L. Dobrushin and O. B. Lupanova, preface by A. N. Kolmogorov.
Shannon, C. E., (1968). Information Theory, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, IL, 14th Edition, Vol. 12, pp. 246B-249.
Shannon, C. E., (1968). Cybernetics, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, IL, 14th Edition, Vol. 12.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1971). La teoria matematica delle comunicazioni , Etas Kompass, Milan. Italian translation of Item 38.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1975). Théorie mathématique de la communication , Les Classiques des sciences humaines, Paris. French translation of Item 38.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1976). Mathematische Grundlagen der Informationstheorie, Scientia Nova, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, pp. 143. German translation of Item 38.
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1981). Teoría matemática de la comunicación , Ediciones Forja, Madrid. Spanish translation of Item 38.
Walker, M. (2003). (Ed.), Science and Ideology: A Comparative History, Routledge, London, pp. 66-95.
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