This model of communication differs from many more traditional approaches
to communication. At the core of the difference is that the model used here is not
human-centered. It doesn’t have being human, or even organic, as a prerequisite
for being an endpoint in a communication system. This expands communication
systems to include processors such as computers, as well as less sophisticated reproducing
devices such as photocopiers. By not arbitrarily limiting the system to
humans, little is lost and much is gained, both by describing phenomena outside
humans that seem very similar to what is traditionally referred to as communication
and by greatly simplifying the definition and making it precise. Because the
definition is not explicitly biological in nature, it is also not explicitly intentional
in nature. Intentional characteristics can be incorporated into processes; modeling
communication as complementary processes can be consistent with intentional
processes and human communication, allowing models of communication such
as that described by Sperber and Wilson [SW95] to be seen as describing communications
that are special cases of this more general model of communication.
Unlike many models of communication, however, our communication processes
are not limited to intentional or human phenomena. Similarly, communication
does not have to transmit meaning or be intrinsically symbolic, although these
phenomena can be incorporated. This differs from Shannon’s model of communication,
which begins with a source which ”produces a message or sequence of
messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal” [Sha93b, p. 6]. Similarly,
when Shannon says that we can ”roughly classify communication systems,”
the categories are described as having a message component [Sha93b, p. 7–8].