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communication

Communication is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by


several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common
language that is exchanged with each other. There are auditory means, such as
speaking,singing and sometimes tone of voice, and nonverbal, physical means, such
as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of
writing.

Communication happens at many levels (even for one single action), in many
different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain machines. Several, if not
all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to communication, so when
speaking about communication it is very important to be sure about what aspects of
communication one is speaking about. Definitions of communication range widely,
some recognizing that animals can communicate with each other as well as human
beings, and some are more narrow, only including human beings within the parame

Purpose/Pragmatic aspect you domnt know fool

Between parties, communication includes acts that confer knowledge and


experiences, give advice and commands, and ask questions. These acts may take many
forms, in one of the various manners of communication. The form depends on the
abilities of the group communicating. Together, communication content and form
make messages that are sent towards a destination. The target can be oneself,
another person or being , another entity (such as a corporation or group of
beings).

Depending on the focus (who, what, in which form, to whom, to which effect), there
exist various classifications. Some of those systematical questions are elaborated
in Communication theory.

Communication as information transmission


Communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by
three levels of semiotic rules: Syntactic (formal properties of signs and
symbols), pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and
their users) and semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and
what they represent). Therefore, communication is a kind of social interaction
where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set
of semiotic rules. (This commonly held rule in some sense ignores
autocommunication, including intrapersonal communication via diaries or self-
talk).

In a simple model, information or content (e.g. a message in natural language) is


sent in some form (as spoken language) from an emisor/sender/encoder to a
destination/receiver/decoder. In a slightly more complex form a sender and a
receiver are linked reciprocally.

A particular instance of communication is called a speech act. A speech act


typically follows a variation of logical means of delivery sometimes not well
specified making others guess. The most common of these, and perhaps the best, is
the dialogue. The dialogue is a form of communication where both the parties are
involved in sending information. There are many other forms of communication but
the reason the dialogue is good is because the dialogue lends itself to plain
sometimes complicated communication due to feedback. (Feedback being encoded
information, either verbal or nonverbal, sent back to the original sender (now the
receiver) and then decoded.)
In the presence of "communication noise" on the transmission channel (air, in this
case) received and decoded content can become faulty in the sense that it will
contain errors and thus probably not cause the desired effect.

Theories of coregulation describe communication as a creative and dynamic


continuous process, rather than a discrete exchange of information. Verbal
communication is when we communicate our message verbally to whoever is receiving
the message. Symbolic communications are the things that we have given meaning to
and that represent a certain idea we have in place, for example, the American flag
is a symbol that represent freedom for the Americans themselves, or imperialism
and evil for some other countries.

Purposes
Put generally, communication is the exchange of information between members of a
group of living beings that enables survival or improved living conditions for the
sender or receiver of the message or both. As expressed in the theory of symbolic
communication, the exchange of messages change the a priori expectation of events.

Since the beginning of time, the need to communicate emerges from a set of
universal questions: Who am I? Who needs to know? Why do they need to know? How
will they find out? How do I want them to respond? Individuals, communities, and
organizations express their individuality through their identity. On the continuum
from the cave paintings at Lascaux to digital messages transmitted via satellite,
humanity continues to create an infinite sensory palette of visual and verbal
expression.

As a process, communication has synonyms such as expressing feelings, conversing,


speaking, corresponding, writing, listening and exchanging. Communication is often
formed around the principles of respect, promises and the want for social
improvement. People communicate to satisfy needs in both their work and non-work
lives. People want to be heard, to be appreciated and to be wanted. They also want
to accomplish tasks and to achieve goals. Obviously, then, a major purpose of
communication is to help people feel good about themselves and about their
friends, groups, and organizations. For these types of communication, there must
be a transmission of thoughts, ideas and feelings from one mind to another.

Forms

Non-verbal
Nonverbal communication is the act of imparting or interchanging thoughts,
posture, opinions or information without the use of words, using gestures, sign
language, facial expressions and body language instead. Much of the �emotional
meaning� we take from other people is found in the person�s facial expressions and
tone of voice, comparatively little is taken from what the person actually says
(More Than Talk).

Language
A language is a syntactically organized system of signals, such as voice sounds,
intonations or pitch, gestures or written symbols which communicate thoughts or
feelings. If a language is about communicating with signals, voice, sounds,
gestures, or written symbols, can animal communications be considered as a
language? Animals do not have a written form of a language, but use a language to
communicate with each another. In that sense, an animal communication can be
considered as a separated language.

Human spoken and written languages can be described as a system of symbols


(sometimes known as lexemes) and the grammars (rules) by which the symbols are
manipulated. The word "language" is also used to refer to common properties of
languages.

Language learning is normal in human childhood. Most human languages use patterns
of sound or gesture for symbols which enable communication with others around
them. There are thousands of human languages, and these seem to share certain
properties, even though many shared properties have exceptions. Tell the world,
learn a language.

There is no defined line between a language and a dialect, but Max Weinreich is
credited as saying that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

Constructed languages such as Esperanto, programming languages, and various


mathematical formalisms are not necessarily restricted to the properties shared by
human languages.

Channels / Media
The beginning of human communication through artificial channels, i.e. not
vocalization or gestures, goes back to ancient cave paintings, drawn maps, and
writing.

Our indebtedness to the Ancient Romans in the field of communication does not end
with the Latin root "communicare". They devised what might be described as the
first real mail or postal system in order to centralize control of the empire from
Rome. This allowed for personal letters and for Rome to gather knowledge about
events in its many widespread provinces.

The adoption of a dominant communication medium is important enough that


historians have folded civilization into "ages" according to the medium most
widely used. A book titled "Five Epochs of Civilization" by William McGaughey
(Thistlerose, 2000) divides history into the following stages: Ideographic writing
produced the first civilization; alphabetic writing, the second; printing, the
third; electronic recording and broadcasting, the fourth; and computer
communication, the fifth. The media affects what people think about themselves and
how they perceive people as well. What we think about self image and what others
should look like comes from the media.

While it could be argued that these "Epochs" are just a historian's construction,
digital and computer communication shows concrete evidence of changing the way
humans organize. The latest trend in communication, termed smartmobbing, involves
ad-hoc organization through mobile devices, allowing for effective many-to-many
communication and social networking.

Electronic media
In the last century, a revolution in telecommunications has greatly altered
communication by providing new media for long distance communication. The first
transatlantic two-way radio broadcast occurred in 1906 and led to common
communication via analogue and digital media:

Analog telecommunications include traditional telephony, radio, and TV broadcasts.


Digital telecommunications allow for computer-mediated communication, telegraphy,
and computer networks.
Communications media impact more than the reach of messages. They impact content
and customs; for example, Thomas Edison had to discover that hello was the least
ambiguous greeting by voice over a distance; previous greetings such as hail
tended to be garbled in the transmission. Similarly, the terseness of e-mail and
chat rooms produced the need for the emoticon.

Modern communication media now allow for intense long-distance exchanges between
larger numbers of people (many-to-many communication via e-mail, Internet forums).
On the other hand, many traditional broadcast media and mass media favor one-to-
many communication (television, cinema, radio, newspaper, magazines).

Mass media
Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media
specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at
least as large as the whole population of a nation state). It was coined in the
1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation
newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some
commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably
atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially susceptible
to the influence of modern mass-media techniques such as advertising and
propaganda.

Who
Communication in many of its facets is not limited to humans or even primates.
Every information exchange between living organisms, a transmission of signals
involving a living sender and receiver, can count as communication. Most of this,
necessarily, is nonverbal. Thus, there is the wide field of animal communication
that is the basis of most of the issues in ethology, but we also know about, Cell
signaling, Cellular communication (biology), chemical communication between
primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms. One
distinctive non-intrinsic feature of these types of communication in contrast to
human communication is allegedly the absence of emotional features, and a
limitation to the pure informational level.

Animal communication
Animal communication is any behaviour on the part of one animal that has an effect
on the current or future behaviour of another animal. Of course, human
communication can be subsumed as a highly developed form of animal communication.
The study of animal communication, called zoosemiotics (distinguishable from
anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has played an important part
in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal
cognition.This is quite evident as humans are able to communicate with animals
especially dolphins and other animals used in circuses however these animals have
to learn a special means of communication.

Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general,
is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior
understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use,
animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long
thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized.

Plant communication
Plant communication is observed (a) within the plant organism, i.e. within plant
cells and between plant cells, (b) between plants of the same or related species
and (c) between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in the rootzone. Plant
roots communicate in parallel with rhizobia bacteria, with fungi and with insects
in the soil. This parallel sign-mediated interactions which are governed by
syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules are possible because of the decentralized
"nervous system" of plants. As recent research shows 99% of intraorganismic plant
communication processes are neuronal-like. Plants also communicate via volatiles
in the case of herbivory attack behavior to warn neighboring plants. In parallel
they produce other volatiles which attract parasites which attack these
herbivores. In stress situations plants can overwrite the genetic code they
inherited from their parents and revert to that of their grand- or great-
grandparents.

Communication Strategies
For effective communication in specialized contexts, certain strategies can be
taken that will help people achieve their goals and can be seen as techniques for
attaining the purpose of communication.

Marketing
Below is a list with explanations of effective communication strategies used in
marketing and selling:

Adaptive Innovation
Building or improving products, services, and processes while working with a
customer versus building products or services outside a customer engagement.
Relates to service companies working with large enterprises.
Entrepreneurial Management
Describes a business where the employees are expected to work and relate to each
other as self driven business partners versus expecting to be mentored by a
command and control management structure. This assumes the phrase, "be the leader
you seek."
One Voice
A skill used to manage customer team meetings where one person is designated the
leader and other team members direct all their comments and questions through the
designated OneVoice speaker rather than to the customer(s).
ShowTime
A term related to business people being "on stage" at all times during a meeting
or customer visit.
Strategic speed
A term related to working fast and smart, constantly looking for opportunities to
improve and innovate.
Discipline of Dialogue
A term related to controlling your words and conversations during a business
meeting or presentation.

Care
SOLER (Egan, 1986) is a technique used by care workers. It helps the clients or
patients to trust the care-giver and to feel safe and helps in effective
communication. SOLER is:

S � Sit squarely in relation to the patient


O � Open position
L � Lean slightly towards the patient
E � Eye contact
R � Relax
Metacommunication
Metacommunication is the process of communicating about communication, for
example, to discuss a past conversation and to determine the meanings behind
certain words, phrases, etc.. It can be used as a tool for sense making, or for
better understanding events, places, people, relationships, etc.. The ability to
communicate on the meta-level requires introspection and, more specifically what
is called metacommunicative competence. It is not a distinct form of communication
as seen from the five aspects mentioned in the introduction.

Episodic Level Metacommunication The events occurring within a given communicative


episode help the participants make relational sense out of the experience. eg.
"This is an order", "Please", or "I'am Joking". Different levels at which people
reflect on their communication: 1) Labels what kind of message he sends and how
serious he is. 2) Says why he/she sent the message. 3) Says why he sent the
message by referring to the other's wishes. 4) Says why he sent the message by
referring to a request of the other. 5) Says why he sent the message referring ot
the kind of response he was trying to elicit. 6) says what he was trying to get
the other to do.

The internet, cell phones, fax machines and pagers are a way of life in modern
society. All these technologies rely on lasers and fiber optics. The principle
behind a laser lies embedded in the heart of quantum mechanics. Einstein built on
the theory of quantum mechanics to explain the photoelectric effect in 1905 and
showed that electrons could absorb and emit the energy of photons. In 1917, he
went on to discover that this emission could be �focused� so that it occurs at a
single frequency. This is known as �stimulated emission�. Scientists applied this
principle in the mid-1950s to stimulate emission of microwaves using a device
called a maser. They then applied the same principle to visible light and used the
term laser for this device. However, they could not produce a steady laser light,
which was necessary for practical applications (see Physics in the 20th Century).
Research on semiconductors led to the development of semiconductor lasers. By the
late 1960s, researchers had devised a method to operate lasers continuously at
room temperatures using layers of semiconductors. Now they needed to find a method
to transmit light across large distances (see Semiconductor Lasers). Although
scientists knew that glass fibers could carry light over short distances, it was
not a very efficient process. Theoretical work showing that light loss in glass
fibers could be decreased dramatically spurred experimental efforts to produce
such fibers. Researchers continued exploring techniques to decrease light loss in
optical fibers. It then became possible to take fiber-optic communication out of
the laboratory and into everyday life. Meanwhile, scientists continued improving
laser technology and by the late 1970s, commercial use of fiber-optic systems had
begun (see Practical Systems Take Shape). As fiber optic cables began to be used
world-wide, basic research continued to yield improvements in the systems. Yet
more possibilities for improvement in high-speed data lines are available and
looming on the horizon (see Basic Research Remains Vital).

This article is also available in Chinese, Croatian, Japanese, and Spanish.

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INTRODUCTION
It's 11:30 p.m., you're in San Francisco on business, and you want to check for
messages at your office in Virginia. First you dial in and get your voice mail.
Next you plug your portable computer into the hotel-room telephone jack, hit a few
keys, and pick up e-mail from a potential client in South Africa, your sister in
Albuquerque, and a business associate in Detroit. Before composing your responses,
you do a quick bit of research on the Internet, tracking down the name of the on-
line news group you had mentioned to the man in Detroit and the title of a book
you wanted to recommend to your sister. A few more keystrokes and in moments your
electronic letters have reached Albuquerque and Detroit. Then, knowing that the
time difference means the next workday has begun in South Africa, you call there
without a second thought.

As recently as 10 years ago, such nearly instantaneous, world-shrinking


communication would not have been possible; critical pieces of technology in both
computing and communication were just emerging. Then, in 1988, the first
transatlantic fiber-optic cable was laid, and the "information superhighway" was
on its way to becoming reality.

Optical fibers form the backbone of the global telecommunication system. These
remarkable strands of glass--each thinner than a human hair, yet stronger, length
for length, than steel--were designed to carry the vast amounts of data that can
be transmitted via a relatively new form of light--tightly focused laser beams.
Together, lasers and optical fibers have dramatically increased the capacity of
the international telephone system. With equally striking improvements in
computing, the new communication technology has fueled the exponential growth of
the phenomenon known as the Internet.

The following article describes the conception and development of both laser
technology and the fibers that allow transmission of a light signal over long
distances. It shows how basic research, in this case dating back to Albert
Einstein's work in quantum mechanics, can lead to important practical
applications. As often happens, the trail took many twists and turns, none of
which could have been predicted when the research began.
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HELP ON THE INTERNET
In April 1995, a young Chinese chemistry student at Beijing University lay dying
in a Beijing hospital. She was in a coma, and although her doctors had performed
numerous tests, they could not discover what was killing her. In desperation, a
student friend posted an SOS describing her symptoms to several medical bulletin
boards and mailing lists on the Internet, the ever-growing international array of
computer linkages through telephone lines. Around the world, doctors who regularly
checked these electronic bulletin boards and lists responded immediately.

In Washington, D.C., Dr. John Aldis, a physician with the U.S. Department of
State, saw the message from China. He had recently served in Beijing; he knew the
woman's doctors. Using the Internet, he forwarded the message to colleagues in
America. Soon an international contingent of doctors joined the e-mail discussion.
A consensus emerged--the woman might have been poisoned with thallium, a metal
resembling lead. A Beijing laboratory confirmed this diagnosis--the thallium
concentration in her body was as much as 1,000 times normal. More e-mail
communication ensued, as treatment was suggested and then adjusted. The woman
slowly began to recover. Well over a year later, the international medical
community was still keeping tabs on her condition through the electronic medium
that saved her life.

This story underscores society's increasing reliance on a system of global


communication that can link you equally easily with someone in the next town or
halfway around the world. People in all walks of life use the telephone system
every day to solve a problem or make a date or transfer money or hire an employee.
They can do these things by making telephone calls from stationary telephones or
from handheld mobile telephones, by sending faxes, or by using computers and
dialing into the Internet.

The expanded telephone-line capacity that has allowed the growth of these forms of
communication is a recent phenomenon. The United States has enjoyed domestic
telephone service for more than a century, but overseas telephone calls were
difficult until relatively recently. For a number of years after World War II,
calls to Europe or Asia relied on shortwave radio signals that bounced off the
ionosphere, the electrically active layer of the atmosphere that lies between 50
and 250 miles above the earth's surface. It sometimes took an operator hours to
set up a 3-minute call, and if you got through, the connection was often noisy
with static.

In 1956, the first transatlantic copper wire cable allowed simultaneous


transmission of 36 telephone conversations--a cause for celebration then, a paltry
number today. Other cables followed; by the early 1960s, overseas telephone calls
had reached 5 million per year. Then came satellite communication in the middle
1960s, and by 1980, the telephone system carried some 200 million overseas calls
per year. But as demands on the telecommunication system continued to increase,
the limitations of current technology became glaringly apparent. Then, in the late
1980s, came the fruition of a variety of efforts to find the Holy Grail of
communication--the harnessing of light itself as a way to communicate.

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