symbols, signals and noise

Finding renewed meaning in its message in the escalating and frenetic age of emails and emoji, this 1953 featurette based on the research and studies of communication theorist Claude Elwood Shannon for the IBM corporation was created by the design-duo Ray and Charles Eames (click here and here for some of their other work). ‘A Communications Primer’ targeted engineers and encouraged them to apply the suite of tools that Shannon developed to their own work.

Well ahead of the era when machines became ubiquitous either in businesses or at home, the discussion of cues and clamour seems just as valid filtered through all the post-war years of progress as they did at the time, as does the central tenant of Shannon’s theory—that information is a measure of one’s freedom of choice in expression and messaging. Be sure to visit Æon magazine at the link up top for more thought-provoking videos and essays.