RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

of the practice of public communications: information, communications and the media. In defining the concept of information, the author gives all the important definitions formulated to date and by immanent analysis indicates their advantages and drawbacks. Today, under the impact of cybernetics, the mathematical theory of information is the m.ost widespread, although the author points out its shortcomings for determining the essence of information. Mathematical theory is better for explaining the problem of transmission of information between one person and another, that is, its communicational aspect, than it is in defining the substance of the concept of information as such. Since information is the highest concept for thinking about and determining the theory and practice of communicology and since it is impossible to describe it by systems inferior in structure to its own, the author declares it best to stay with a descriptive definition to the effect that information is the substance of what is being communicated, that it is perception and freedom preempted through man’s work and creativity. We can therefore approach information best heuristically, by asking zvhat?, and this is a problem of cognitive theory and semantics. That it is the synthetic departure point of the author is clearly revealed today in the findings of human communication, particularly in its scientific and artistic variants. For a better distinction between the concepts of information and communication, the author points out that it is communicologically speaking quite wrong to use the term "inform” in the sense of communicate because this confuses the issue of levels and spheres in communicological practice. If information is the substance which is transmitted in the process of communication, then it is far more correct to speak of information being intermediated, of its being communicated through the various media used throughout history. The author therefore defines communication as the process of information passing from the state of per se to the state of per nos which always happens in the field of hardware adopted throughout history (different media). The author singles out for special

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