Mathematical considerations in seeking fundamental limits to professional communication processes and effects

Abstract

It is unusual (and often, unfashionable) to seek fundamental limits to human phenomena such as professional communication. It is axiomatic that human potential is virtually unlimited and, therefore, to suggest such limits is considered (by some) to be almost inhuman. Nevertheless, if it can be given that professional communication primarily involves mass communication principles, then fundamental limits are implicit in the two basic models used to explain the field: 1) the Shannon-Weaver model of a general communication system, and 2) the diffusion of innovation S-curve. Scientific methods can be used to measure human, or professional, communication phenomena-but measurement error is bound to be far greater than that for the physical sciences.