Talk:Shannon–Weaver model
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It is asinine to call this the "Shannon-Weaver" model — emblematic of the clueless student contributors to Wikipedia.
Claude Shannon invented information theory. The archives of the Library of Congress show he was working on it in 1939, and that many of the ideas were already formed in his cryptography memo for Bell Labs in 1945. He published a 25,000-word, sole authored paper in 1948 that has more than 15,000 citations according to Google Scholar. The fact that Shannon's paper was bundled with Weaver’s 1949 Scientific American article (a summary of Shannon's work) does nothing to diminish the role of Shannon. Weaver never did anything ever again in information theory, but Shannon published more than a dozen subsequent papers and taught an advanced PhD seminar at MIT that trained a generation of theorists.
They don't call it the Shannon-Weaver Award for career achievement in information theory. AT&T doesn't have Shannon-Weaver labs. The celebrations of Shannon theory were held in 1998 not 1999.
The model was present in the 1948 BSTJ article, but also in his 1947 and 1948 presentations at IRE meetings of the paper eventually published as "Communication in the Presence of Noise." Weaver had nothing to do with creating it, and engineers (or mathematicians or physics) who cite "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" are citing Shannon's decade of reconceptualizing communication, not Weaver's superficial popularization.
I could go on, but obivously no one who knows anything about Shannon Theory has read this article. Instead, dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of naive Wikipedia readers have been misled by it. JoelWest 21:59, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I do know a lot about Shannon, and it's not as asinine as you think. It was news to me, too, so I did quick book search and found this. That's quite a pile of books talking about a Shannon–Weaver model, so I figured it's an OK name for it. If you thinks there's a better way, study the refs and report back. Dicklyon 04:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
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- Just because a few people use the term, doesn’t mean it’s the correct usage. Even if a lot of people said "Shannon-Weaver," if they are the least knowledgeable people that wouldn't make it the proper name -- massive ignorance does not trump accurate knowledge. As it turns out, a search in the entire IEEE database produces 3 hits for "Shannon-Weaver model", 31 hits for "Shannon-Weaver" and 615 hits for "Shannon Theory." For example, in the official ITSoc 50th anniversary issue, the lead article is "Fifty Years of Shannon Theory".
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- Weaver never did anything to create or advance the theory. Shannon got a 12 page article in Fortune (12/1953) and Weaver doesn't show up until the last page, when he gets a paragraph as a commentator on the theory, not a creator or promulgator. If you went to the board of the Information Theory Society, or polled the 25 winners of its highest award (the Shannon Award), you wouldn't get a single vote for putting Weaver co-equal with Shannon. JoelWest 19:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
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- I don't dispute much of what you say, but if 110 books call it the Shannon–Weaver theory, then there must be some historical basis that's worth noting even if you don't like it. To just jump in and call everyone ignorant and asinine doesn't lead to progress. Dicklyon 21:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
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