ABSTRACT
The word communication will be used in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind can affect another. In communication there seem to be problems at three levels: technical, semantic, and influential. The technical problems are concerned with the accuracy of transference of information from sender to receiver. They are inherent in all forms of communication, whether by sets of discrete symbols, or by a varying signal, or by a varying two-dimensional pattern. One might be inclined to think that the technical problems involve only the engineering details of good design of a communication system, while the semantic and the effectiveness problems contain most if not all of the philosophical content of the general problem of communication. The mathematical theory of communication is so general that one does not need to say what kinds of symbols are being considered—whether written letters or words, or musical notes, or spoken words, or symphonic music, or pictures.
