Shannon's The Mathematical Theory of Communication

Weaver's Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication

Weaver's proposal of a general theory of communication puts forth a distorted picture of human communication by the following inherent assumptions.

Weaver tries to appropriate human communication into the mechanical model, in which the semantic problems are assumed to be resolved.

Weaver suggests that the effectiveness problem is concerned with the effects of communication.

For Weaver, human communication becomes a matter of "all the procedures by which one mind may affect another."

For Weaver, communication is not dialogical, but procedual and unidirectional, leading from a self-evident intention to a self-evident behavior. Successful communication is understood by cause and effect, not by negotiation meanings.

World 1: The physical world, the cosmos in which Earth, vital though it is to us, is but an insignificant speck in the immensity of the universe of radiation and matter.

World 2: The world of subjective human knowledge or "mental states"

World 3: The world of objective knowledge, the products of human mind as recorded in languages, the arts, the sciences, the technologies-in all the artifacts humans have stored or scattered around the Earth.

Popper's theory of the three worlds can be viewed as the starting point for constructing a theoretical foundation for information science, particularly in constructing a foundational understanding of information and knowledge.

Life in the round is one with an enormous degree of imprecision but surprisingly, accepted levels of uncertainty.

Social norms play a prominent role in holding a small world together.

Proposition1 A small world conceptualization is essential to a life in the round because it establishes legitimized others (primarily 'insiders') within that world who set boundaries on behavior.

POrposition 2 Social norms force private behavior to undergo public scrutiny. It is this public arena that deems behavior - including information-seeking behavior - appropriate or not.

Porposition 3 The result of establishing appropriate behavior is the creation of a world-view. This world-view includes language, value, meaning, symbols, and a context that holds the world-view within temporal boundaries.

Proposition 4 For most of us, a world-view is played out as life in the round. Fundamentally, this is a life for granted. It works most of the time with enough predictability that, unless a critical problem arises, there is no point in seeking information.

Proposition 5 Members who live in the round will not cross the boundaries of their world to seek information.

Proposition 6 Individuals will cross information boundaries only to the extent that the following conditions are met:

it explains ways in which people define their life experiences in order to survive in a world od extreme distrust.

The model is commonly regarded as a representation of the progression of data to wisdom in human minds.

The representational view of knowledge treats thought and learning as quantitative events and thus suggests that they can be empirically studied as such: "Data are symbols that represent properties of objects, events and their their environments.

"Information, as noted, is extracted from data by analysis in many aspects of which computers are adept."

"Two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonsense, can be exactly equivalent, from the present viewpoint, as regards information" (Shannon & Weaver, p. 8)

The use of technical model for human communication and the vocabularies deployed in Weaver's text lead to misunderstanding of the concept of information in information theory in terms of an intentional orobjective cause for effects which is radically different form the strictly defined probabilistic measure in its original mathematical expression.

The semantic problems are largely neglected on Weaver's exposition of information theory.

a state in which one may or may not act on the information received

behavior viewed by inhabitants of a social world as most appropriate for that particular context

provides a predictable, routine, and manageable approach to everyday reality