Source—(transmitter/encoder)----[ channel ]----(receiver/decoder)--Destination

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noise

2.1. Pierce paper:

liklihood of occurrence is not enough to judge effectiveness

Can you describe the grammar for a specific search engine?

Is there a general search grammar?

Meaning in the destination is "constructed" from destination’s local memory

[i.e., meaning is not held in the book, video, website, etc.]

Pierce: communication is adjusting understandings; imparting areas of knowledge or changing views is education

Common interest is more important than a common language

Communication is dependent on communities of interest

Generalize to social systems, add feedback/control (homeostasis), mass media and we have an overview of communication fields

Three levels of communication problem

Accuracy of transmission (technical problem)

Degree of meaning (semantic problem)

Effect of transmission (effectiveness problem)

Do not confuse information with meaning!!

Shannon assumes communication initiated by SELECTING a desired message from a set of possible messages

Then, information is the amount of uncertainty in the SOURCE (not the message). This the amount of entropy (randomness). "Information is a measure of one’s freedom of choices when one selects a message." P. 9

A search grammar providing 32 commands (or 32 icons in a graphic language) implies 5 bits of information (log 32₂=5) assumes 32 commands are independent and equally likely at a given time, and that exactly one will be selected. This works fine for a simple, one unit message (a battlefield command, an executive decision, etc.) but for human communication, conditional probability comes into play since the number of possible selections available once one is made may vary (leads to coding theory), complicating the technical subproblems (unit size, channel capacity, noise effects, etc.)