For most people communication is simply talk. It is a natural event. Students enrolling in an introductory undergraduate communication course will quickly reference a convenient and aging dictionary when asked to define communication and provide the following:
“Communication is a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior” (Webster, 1983, p. 266).
The fundamental problem with defining communication as nothing more than information exchange is that information exchange is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for understanding the complex process of communication. The naive perspective which allows one to define communication as simple information exchange suggests that one can simply define engineering as “the art of managing engines” – a definition unlikely to resonate with most professionals who study mechanical, electrical, chemical, civil, or biological engineering.