we develop communicology
We understand communicology as the discipline that studies communication in all its forms, contexts, media, techniques, and systems. We consider communication a universal phenomenon present throughout the universe, extending beyond human interaction and encompassing both inert matter and living systems.
The focus here lies in the complexity of communication across diverse domains — physical, chemical, biosemiotic, and cognitive — regardless of whether human involvement is present. We recognize the interdependence and interconnectedness of all elements involved in any communicational system.
Communication is understood as a phenomenon evidenced through the reaction triggered by an informational exchange.
My two axioms are:
Axiom 1: Whenever informational contact occurs, there is a medium and a context that made the communication possible.
Axiom 2: Every reaction, regardless of its nature, results from a communicational process.
Observable Detail: When contact occurs, the distance becomes zero over the medium that enables the connection (applicable, for example, to physics and chemistry).
Charles Michel , 2024
Charles Michel , 2024
The Shift That Makes This Framework Distinct
Its novelty does not lie in being speculative or mystical, but in establishing a criterion that allows the phenomenon to be measured, observed, and classified without relying on language, meaning, or intentionality. This shift opens a path toward addressing something the field has never fully resolved: a unifying theory of communication.
From this standpoint, what we are proposing is not an extension of previous theories but a different foundation upon which existing theories may be reorganized and made more coherent.
This framework holds because it does not contradict established knowledge; rather, it reorganizes it and explains it from a more fundamental level. In this sense, the proposed model does not compete with existing communication theory — it encompasses it.
What traditional scholarship refers to as “human communication” becomes a particular case within a broader communicational structure.
To the extent that current formal theory allows, there is no established school of thought that conceptualizes communication in this way: as a universal phenomenon grounded in informational exchange, evidenced through reaction, regardless of whether the elements involved are human, biological, mechanical, or physical.
This perspective does not restrict communication to language or intent; instead, it recognizes communication as a structural condition of relational existence at any scale.
Epistemological Consequence
When communication is regarded as a human phenomenon, its study focuses on interpreting meanings.When it is regarded as a natural phenomenon, its study focuses on observing and measuring reactions.
Here, the focus shifts. This shift introduces a direction that traditional theory has not explored: the recognition that communication is not a human creation but a preexisting mechanism of the universe that humans later adopted.
Human communicational complexity emerges afterward, as an evolutionary extension of the same principle already operating in atoms, molecules, ecosystems, and physical systems.
Discover the foundations of the Communicology we have developed.
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What is your communicational environment?
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This 74-page PDF ebook challenges conventional expectations by exploring communication from another perspective.
FROM ANOTHER PLACE – From inanimate nature to the intention of the living.
"From Another Place" invites readers to reflect on communicational environments, interpretation, and perception of the world. It challenges us to adopt an open and receptive attitude toward the multiple realities that surround us.
Dive into this material—free of labels and expectations—and discover your own communicational environment.
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Communication is commonly understood as a human process centered on transmitting messages, expressing ideas, or generating meaning. Within this framework, communication requires intention, language and it is therefore associated with speaking, writing, persuading, or interpreting. This perspective has been valuable for examining cultural and social practices, yet it restricts the phenomenon to humans and to its symbolic dimension.
My approach introduces a different view: communication occurs whenever there is an exchange of information between elements (where element refers to anything that emits information, including a thought). A cell responds to a chemical signal, a machine processes data, an organism reacts to a stimulus, and two particles adjust their behavior based on physical forces. In all of these situations, information flows and generates interaction and response. From this standpoint, communication is not merely something we do — it is something that occurs as a condition for any system to persist, interact, or change.
This way of understanding communication expands its scope, allowing human, biological, technological, and physical processes to be analyzed within a shared conceptual framework. Seen from this perspective, the central question shifts: rather than only asking how humans communicate, we begin to ask what makes communication possible at any level of existence.
When communication is examined beyond language and human intentionality, a different framework emerges: communication may be understood as a structural process of informational exchange between systems — whether living, technological, or even physical.
Key contributors to this broader perspective include Norbert Wiener, who, through cybernetics, proposed communication as a flow of information observable in both machines and living organisms. W. Ross Ashby advanced the notion of self-organization applied to complex systems, and Ludwig von Bertalanffy developed General Systems Theory, demonstrating that diverse systems share common principles of exchange and regulation. Thomas Sebeok expanded the discussion into the biological realm through biosemiotics, while Anthony Wilden integrated ecological and systemic thinking, framing communication as part of the balance and dynamic interaction among interconnected elements.
These perspectives share essential principles: they define communication as an informational exchange between systems regardless of intention or linguistic capacity; they emphasize mechanisms and processes rather than meanings alone; and they acknowledge that communicational principles apply across multiple scales of existence — physical, biological, technological, and social. I expand their concepts redefining the concept of Communication.
Under this view, communication is no longer just a human act, but a structural principle that supports interaction, organization, and transformation in any system.
Examples of the communicational phenomenon analyzed from this perspective
A person opens a window in a warm room. No one speaks, yet another person stands up and grabs a jacket because they feel cold. Communication is not in the act of opening the window nor in a verbal message, but in the reaction: the body interprets the new temperature (information) and acts accordingly.
An example in the press can be seen when a newspaper headline states: “Severe storm approaching the region.” The sentence itself does not define communication from this perspective; what confirms the communicational phenomenon is the reaction of those who receive the information. Some people close their windows, others cancel a trip, others leave work earlier, and some do nothing. The headline functions as an informational stimulus, and communication is recognized only when the differentiated responses in the environment are observed.
When vinegar is added to baking soda, immediate effervescence occurs. The baking soda “reacts” to the presence of the acid because it receives molecular information that triggers a change. Communication lies in that observable reaction.
When a cell detects an increase in glucose in its environment, it releases insulin to regulate it. There is no symbolic message, yet the cell “reads” the surroundings, processes the information, and responds. The reaction confirms that communication occurred.
A bird emits an alarm call and the rest of the group flies away. Whether the message has a conventional human meaning is irrelevant: what confirms communication is the group’s reaction to the informational stimulus.
An intelligent sensor detects smoke and immediately activates an alarm. The signal has no intention or subjective interpretation, but the system changes its state in response to the information, demonstrating that communication occurred in structural terms.
Communication organizes the interaction between information.
It is not solely a human capacity — it is a condition of existence.
Our Terminology: The Vocabulary That Supports This New Perspective
Our communicology arises from observing communication beyond dialogue, messages, or human behavior. It proposes understanding communication as a structural phenomenon present in any process where information is exchanged. For this reason, over time, specific terms emerged that are not found in traditional communication studies but that allow a more precise description of how communication operates when analyzed from this approach.
Among the essential terms is the structural communicational process, which allows communication to be considered at any scale—human, biological, physical, or systemic—as the organizing condition of interaction between information. To this, we add communicational neutralization, a central tool for observing situations without interpretative filters. Other key concepts include individual communicational environments, referring to the interpretive structures through which each person processes information, and interpretative reaction, which highlights that responses are not directed at events themselves but at how they are interpreted internally.
To refine the analysis, we incorporate the technical concept of elementization, which makes it possible to break down a situation into observable components. We also include learned communicational filters, which describe the impact of culture, personal history, and habits on interpretation, and communicational interferences, which refer to frictions in information exchange that arise from context or interpretive structure rather than content.
When this framework is applied to well-being, terms such as communicational relearning emerge, referring to the reorganization of the interpretive structure to transform emotional experience and meaning-making; as well as neutralization prior to emotion, which acknowledges that every emotion is the product of a previous communicational process and not an independent impulse.
Additionally, this theory incorporates concepts situated at the intersection of communication, philosophy, and physics. The idea of communication as a condition of existence proposes that nothing can react, change, or relate without the exchange of information, positioning communication as a foundational principle of how the universe functions. The concept of active information recognizes that information acts, modifies, transforms, and produces responses. It is an expression present in all systems that enables organization, change, or reaction, operating even before it is consciously interpreted. We also integrate the term biosemiotics, acknowledging that this dynamic occurs not only in humans but in all living systems capable of interpreting signals, stimuli, and contexts.
All these terms are not intended to complicate the field but to make it more precise. Each term exists because reality required a new word to describe what is being observed from this perspective. And when a discipline generates its own language, it signals the beginning of a path. This is where ours begins.
