Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The model of communication in information theory emerged from
a mathematical culture that valued the precision and the possibility of
mathematical development, obtainable from the abstraction of funda-
mental concepts and entities from everyday reality. The fundamental
components of the model were identified by Claude Shannon during the
late 1930s, and the model itself was developed and substantiated through
cryptography during the 1941-1945 war.
1
Including both the model
of communication and its mathematical development, the theory was
finally made fully public in 1948 in a two-part article, “A Mathematical
Theory of Communication” (Shannon 1948/1993). At a biographical
level, Shannon had been interested in coding systems, including Morse
code, during his adolescence (Liversidge 1993, xxii). On a cultural level,
coding systems for transforming written language, including Morse code
and other telegraphic codes, had proliferated during the late nineteenth
century, partially resulting from the need to transmit messages over the
geopolitical space created by the western expansion of the United States
and its increased links with Europe (Warner 1993). Thus, practical under-
standing of coding preceded theory.
Data indicate a very limited intersection between citations to Saussure
and to Shannon and that very few documents captured by Google
(2005)
include both the phrase
mathematical theory of communication
and the
word
syntagm
(see table 7.1). Data is only suggestive, rather than conclu-
sive, but it strongly confirms that the conjunction of information theory
from the article “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” with the
concept of the syntagma, pursued here, is almost entirely unanticipated.
Including its strong influence on the early development of information
science (Roberts 1976), information theory has been widely diffused but
not necessarily well understood since its formulation by Shannon in 1948
(1948/1993). Particularly in the humanities and the social sciences but
not within information theory (Verdú and McLaughlin, 2000), Warren
Weaver's interpretation in a highly influential introduction to the mono-
graphic publication,
The Mathematical Theory of Communication
, has
been received mostly as explication, with limited recourse to Shannon's
own arguments (Shannon 1956/1993; Tidline 2004). Weaver's introduc-
tion includes the suggestion that information theory can provide a model
for understanding human communication at the levels of meaning and
