Why was I even alive at all ? Most of the thinking that has been done about communication has been in the field of Information Technology , with the general approach being concerned with Claude Shannon 's idea that: " The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point." This is, of course, a very reasonable approach as long as you are dealing with machines. But another fundamental problem, and one that I would argue is infinitely more important at this time, is that human beings are, very clearly, not machines. So how does communication work in people? Communication always most basically works as: Information --------> Idea . (With Idea here being defined as: any information that follows from the first information. With machines, the information that follows will be the same as the information at first, as per Sh