Shannon-Weaver Model and Game Theory: Foundational Concepts
The Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication
The foundational work originated at the Bell Telephone Laboratories organization where Claude Shannon was working. Shortly after, Warren Weaver, a sociologist, composed an essay intended to emphasize the benefits of this proposal, which was published alongside the previous text in July 1949.
Shannon’s work is titled The Mathematical Theory of Communication, and Weaver’s contributions were titled Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication. Taken together, they resulted in a small book that took the title of the former. Thus, the union of two texts from two different disciplines produced a lasting reference work in the field of communication. Typically, these concepts are referred to as the Shannon and Weaver Model of Information Theory.
Components of the Communication Model
The theory has a remarkably simple graphical expression: the information source selects a desired message from a set of possible messages. The transmitter converts the message into a signal, which is sent via the communication channel to the receiver/receptor. The receiver serves as an inverse transmitter, changing the transmitted signal back into a message and passing this message to the destination/recipient.
As an example: “When I talk to you, my brain is the source of information, its consignee [destination], my voice is the transmitter system, and your ear with its eighth cranial nerve is the recipient.”
This linearly oriented movement involves a set of components, which can be distinguished precisely by their location and function:
- Source
- Transmitter
- Channel
- Noise
- Receiver
- Destination
Understanding Game Theory
What is Game Theory?
Game theory consists of circular reasoning which cannot be avoided when considering strategic issues. In game theory, uneducated intuition is not very reliable in strategic situations, and therefore it must be trained by considering instructive examples, even if those examples are not real. In contrast, substantial advantages are often gained by studying games if they are chosen carefully. In these model games, one can ignore all the details.
Origins of Game Theory
Game theory was created by Von Neumann and Morgenstern in their classic book The Theory of Games Behavior, published in 1944. Economists Cournot and Edgeworth were particularly innovative in the nineteenth century. Other contributions were later made by mathematicians Borel and Zermelo. Von Neumann himself had laid the foundations in an article published in 1928. But it was not until the book by Von Neumann and Morgenstern appeared that the world understood how powerful the instrument they discovered was for studying human relationships.
Approaches to Game Theory
Von Neumann and Morgenstern investigated two different approaches to game theory:
The Strategic or Uncooperative Approach
The first is the strategic or uncooperative approach. This approach requires specifying in detail what players can and cannot do during the game, and then requires each player to seek an optimal strategy. What is best for one player depends on what the other players intend to do, and this in turn depends on what they think the first player will do. Von Neumann and Morgenstern solved this problem in the particular case of games with two players whose interests are diametrically opposed. These games are called strictly competitive or zero-sum games, because any gain for one player is always balanced by a corresponding loss for the other player. Chess, backgammon, and poker are usually treated as zero-sum games.
The Cooperative or Coalitional Approach
The second part of the book by Von Neumann and Morgenstern developed the cooperative or coalitional approach, which sought to describe optimal behavior in games with many players. Since this is a much harder problem, it is not surprising that the results were less precise.