Note that the choice of a hierarchy as a structure is arbitrary and that a set of
communication processes may be also understood as placed in a straight line, with
one set of processes producing information which is then presented to the inputs
to the inverse processes. Using the notion of a hierarchy facilitates an understanding
of the relationship between related individual information processes and the
larger communication processes. We also do not mean to imply that encoding or
decoding as Shannon viewed these operations are essential to this model of communication.
While the hierarchical model emphasizes transformations which may
be interpreted as the traditional encoding and decoding found in more traditional
Shannesque models, remember that a straight wire may allow one end to communicate
with the other end, with little processing present to suggest the encoding
and decoding metaphor.