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A system must be complex enough to react to difference, recognize organization, or create a message for information to exist in it. Simple systems yield simple forms of information and communication, complex systems are capable of handling more complex and involved forms of information and communication.
The simplest communication system would have the least possible number of interacting parts. A communication that includes a transmission of information that indicates the presence of light to a single-celled organism that reacts to light is less complex than a communication that includes two people sending e-mail to each other from different computers. The processes a human uses to interpret what the presence of mositure in soil feels like are more complex than the process an earthworm uses to interpret the same information, because a human has more structures that interact to recognize and interpret information than an earthworm does. As the number of parts that make up a communication system increases, the communication system becomes more complex. For instance, if the receiver is an organism, as the number of its cells increases, the likelyhood that individual cells will join together to take up specific tasks increases. The greater the number of parts in a communication system, the more possible interactions between all the parts of the communication system. When a system becomes more complex, it may develop the ability perform more tasks-- a hand-held calculator can perform and display addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. |