Issues in Communications

The study of communications, also referred to as epistemology by philosophers can quite literally be traced to the inquiries of the Sophists. Gorgias, for example, argued that even if anything were to be knowable, it would be incommunicable, for communications limited by inescapable opposition. Between speech, or the vehicle of knowledge, and the object of a cognitional experience, there is "such a radical heterogeneity that when one speaks he communicates only words and not things (McLean & Aspell, 1971, p. 102)." In other words, the Stoics took the position that nothing can be expressed or communicated absolutely and that human knowledge, in terms of both its experience and its expression, is a tragedy of irreconcilable opposites.

From this philosophical beginning, the field of communication study has evolved over time. Barker and Barker (1993, p. 3), in describing human communication, note that with the emergence of homo sapiens, communication became more complex than it had previously been with other life forms. Generally, Barker and Barker (1993, p. 3) define communication as "a process in which two or more elements of a system interact in order to achieve a desired outcome or goal." Generally, communication until relatively recently in man's history, consisted of verbal exchanges of information followed by early and somewhat primitive forms of written communication. With every advance in writing, from the use of papyrus and clay tablets to the development

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d on one another, with each technology generating ever-more complex possibilities and potentials. Barker and Barker (1993, p. 329) put it this way: "modern technology has provided us with additional sources of materials in the form of electronic media. Films, television, cassettes, records, computerized databases, and videotapes are all valuable sources of information." In other words, the shift in the history of communication moves from the Sophists interest in determining what communication entails or conveys about knowledge to new ways of conveying that knowledge through differ channels. We have clearly entered into an era of mass media communication (Barker & Barker, 1993, p. 386). This is an era in which communication is constant and, thanks to the Internet, is able to link individual from distant places in real time for the purpose of information exchange. These changes have introduced new strategies for studying communications, assessing its impact, and determining its usefulness in many different settings. . Barker and Barker (1993, pp. 119-121) pointed out that there are many different perspectives brought to bear on studying selected topics in human communication. On the one hand, there is the humanistic pers

Category: Psychology - I