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emarks, "If I sell you my horse, I can't ride him after that. If I sell you<br />

what I know, we both know it".<br />

3.3 Information Theory - Origins<br />

Information Theory was first developed during the late 1940's by Claude<br />

Shannon and Warren Weaver (Paris, 2000). In Paris' narration, the<br />

fundamental basis <strong>of</strong> Shannon and Weaver's information theory is the<br />

communication process, which includes an information source, a transmitter,<br />

a receiver, a destination, and noise.<br />

Therefore in this respect, there is a source from which information<br />

originates, and a destination, i.e., the individual being communicated to.<br />

According to the authors, the voice from the source accounts for the<br />

transmitter, while hearing <strong>of</strong> the end-user accounts for the receiver. Noise in<br />

this .instance is any form <strong>of</strong> interference caused during the communication<br />

process.<br />

A similar model, further illustrating this process <strong>of</strong> communication, was<br />

developed by Strain and Wysong (1978) who describe communication as a<br />

process that consists <strong>of</strong> a sender, a message and the receiver. The driving<br />

force behind this theory stems from the belief that to increase the content <strong>of</strong><br />

information, one must try and reduce entropy - noise. Lucey (1987) further<br />

examines the Information theory by Shannon and Weaver, and identifies<br />

three levels <strong>of</strong> communication i.e. Firstly the technical level which is from a<br />

telecommunications point <strong>of</strong> view. It looks into how accurately the symbols<br />

<strong>of</strong> communication are transmitted, and forms the main thrust <strong>of</strong> Information<br />

Theory. The second level is concerned with semantics, which looks into the<br />

precision with which the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning.<br />

In other words, information must be relevant, have meaning and a subject.<br />

It must also be intelligent and have instruction about something and/or<br />

7-1

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