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 of the printing press, communication has become more comprehensive and more complex.
Barker and Barker (1993, p. 329) state that printed materials have long been relied on as the main source of information for speech content. Such materials include books, magazines, journals, pamphlets, newspapers, diaries, encyclopedias, and so forth. The early printing presses which produced for example, the Gutenberg Bible, have long since been replaced by high speed pri...