Diagrams of Communication

1. Morris Eaves Rachel Lee Diagrams of Communication

2. Speech Circuit of Ferdinand de Saussure (c. 1916)"Suppose that the opening of the circuit is in A's brain, where mental facts (concepts) are associated with representation of the linguistic sounds (sound-image) that are used for their expression. A given concept unlocks a corresponding sound-image in the brain; this purely psychological phenomenon is followed in turn by a physiological process: the brain transmits an impulse corresponding to an image to the organs used in producing sounds. Then the sound waves travel from the mouth of A to the ear of B; a purely physical process. Next, the circuit continues in B, but the order is reversed… Indeed, we should not fail to note that the word-image stands apart from the sound itself and that it is just as psychological as the concept which is associated with it." (de Saussure, 1915/1959, pp. 11-12).

3. Claude Shannon’s original communication diagram (1948)‏“In the late 1940s Claude Shannon, a research mathematician at Bell Telephone Laboratories, invented a mathematical theory of communication that gave the first systematic framework in which to optimally design telephone systems. The main questions motivating this were how to design telephone systems to carry the maximum amount of information and how to correct for distortions on the lines.His ground-breaking approach introduced a simple abstraction of human communication, called the channel. Shannon's communication channel consisted of a sender (a source of information), a transmission medium (with noise and distortion), and a receiver (whose goal is to reconstruct the sender's messages).” (“Claude Shannon and Communication Theory”)

4. A Simple Shannon Framework (by R. Victor Jones)‏

5. More Realistic or Complete Shannon Framework (R. Victor Jones)‏

6. More Realistic or Complete Shannon Framework (R. Victor Jones)‏

7. “Shannon’s original 1948 diagram modified with an oval superimposed over the limits of Shannon’s actual research. Shannon never left the confines of this oval to address the essence of meaningful communication. Any theory of Instruction would need to extend outside of the oval to quantify the ideal function and the indirect “meaning” of any message” (Abel and Trevors).

8. Modern Digital Communication Systems

9. The Communication Circuit of Stuart Hall (b 1932)‏

10. Bibliography • Abel, David L. and Jack T. Trevors. “Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information.” Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling. 2:29 2005. 9 January 2009. http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29 • De Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. 1916. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html • “Claude Shannon.” Wikipedia. 9 January 2009. 9 January 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon • “Communications Theory, Modern Digital Communication Systems.” ARC Communications Research Network (ACoRN). 9 January 2009.http://www.acorn.net.au/telecoms/commtheory/communicationtheory.cfm • Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” 1980. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem08c.html • Jones, R. Victor. “The Shannon Diagram: The Elements of Communication Processes.” 1 November 2005. 9 January 2009. http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/cscie129/nu_lectures/lecture1/Shannon_Diagram_files/Shannon_Diagram.html • Shannon, C.E. “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Reprinted from The Bell Systems Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp 379-423, 623 - 565, July - October, 1948. • “Claude Shannon and Communication Theory.” Exploratorium: The Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception. 1996. 15 January 2009. http://www.exploratorium.edu/complexity/CompLexicon/Shannon.html