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Unit 6: Information and Communications Technology

they expect and understand. Lastly, communication makes a demand on the recipient, in terms of Notes
his emotional preference or rejection. Thus, communication is not to be confused with information.
While information is logical, formal and impersonal, communication is perception.
Communication is more than mere transferring or transmission of ideas or thoughts. It is not a
static act as some of the earlier definitions suggest but it is a dynamic process of action and interaction
towards a desired goal, as suggested by later definitions. Communication is, therefore, a process
of sharing or exchange of ideas, information, knowledge, attitude or feeling among two or more
persons through certain signs and symbols.
The information is shared or exchanged through certain signs or symbols; it could be language, oral or
written. While sharing and exchanging ideas or information with others, we are actually interaction
with people and establishing a kind of relationship that helps us to achieve the task set before us.
Some other functional definitions of communication are:
‘The transfer or conveying of meaning’ (Oxford Dictionary)
‘One mind affecting another’ (Claude Shannon)
‘Transmission of stimuli’ (Colin Cherry)
‘One system influences another’ (Charles E. Osgood)
‘The mechanism through which human relations exist and develop’ (Wilbur Schramm)
Communication is the process of transmitting feelings, attitudes, facts, beliefs and ideas
between living beings. (Birvenu)
Communication is the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common
system of symbols. (I.A.Richards)
Communication is the sum of all the things one person does when he wants to create
understanding in the mind of another. It is a bridge of meaning. It involves a systematic
and continuous process of telling, listening and understanding. (Louis Allen)

Task State your views how commuication is the process of interchanging thoughts or ideas
between individuals.

6.4 Importance of Communication
Communication is important both for an individual and also for the society. A person’s need for
communication is as strong and as basic as the need to eat, sleep and love. Communication is the
requirement of social existence and a resource in order to engage in the sharing of experiences, through
‘symbol mediated interaction’. Isolation is in fact the severest punishment for human being.
Grown-ups, children and old people all need to communicate. Society punishes criminals by
locking them up in solitary cells, thus, starving them of the basic need, and indeed the fundamental
right to communicate. Communication thus involves active interaction with our environments-
physical, biological and social. Deprived of this interaction we would not be aware of whether we
are safe or in danger, whether hated or loved, or satisfied or hungry. However, most of the people
take this interaction and this relationship for granted, unless we experience some deprivation of it.
When that happens we adapt ourselves to the environment so that we do not lose touch, in both the
literal and figurative senses. For, to lose touch is to suffer isolation.
The basic human need for communication can perhaps be traced to the process of mankind’s
evolution from lower species. Animals, for instance, have to be in sensory communication with
their physical and biological surroundings to find food, protect themselves and reproduce their
species. The loss of sensation, the inability to hear a predator for instance can mean loss of life.
Thus, it is said that the biology of human beings and other living organisms is such that they have
to depend upon each other. This dependence gives rise to a situation where it is the biological
necessity for the human beings to live in groups. Society is therefore, the outcome of the evolution
of the human race and man is a social animal not by option but by compulsion.

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