Literature/1949/Shannon

Figures

 * Fig. 1. -- Schematic diagram of a general communication system. (p. 34)

Excerpts

 * The word information, in this theory, is used in a special sense that must not be confused with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning. (p. 8)
 * The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the message have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design. (p. 31)

Related works

 * Shannon, Claude E. (1948). "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Bell System Technical Journal 27(3): 379-423, 27(4): 623-656.
 * Shannon, Claude E. (1948). "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." Bell System Technical Journal 27(3): 379-423, 27(4): 623-656.