It was at Bell Labs that Shannon produced the series of papers that transformed the world, and that transformation continues today. In 1948, Shannon was connecting information theory and physics by developing his new perspective on entropy and its relation to the laws of thermodynamics. That connection is evolving today, as others explore the implications of quantum computing, by enlarging information theory to treat the transmission and processing of quantum states. (来源：英语学习门户 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

　　Shannon must rank near the top of the list of the major figures of Twentieth Century science, though his name is relatively unknown to the general public. His influence on everyday life, which is already tremendous, can only increase with the passage of time.

　Harold Dwight Lasswell （1902—1978）

　　Harold D. Lasswell was born on February 13, 1902, in Donnellson, Illinois, U.S. He died on December 18, 1978, in New York, New York. Lasswell is an influential political scientist known for seminal studies of power relations and of personality and politics, and for other major contributions to contemporary behavioral political science. He authored more than 30 books and 250 scholarly articles on diverse subjects, including international relations.

　　Harold D. Lasswell is well known for his comment on communications:

　　Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) Which Channel (with) What Effect

　　Lasswell's model of communications is significantly different from those of engineers, including Claude Shannon, and his notion of channel is also different, since it includes different types of media. For example, newspapers, magazines, journals and books are all text media, but are assumed to have different distribution and readership, and hence different effects.

　　Lasswell's model appears to be a one way model, though the effect is often monitored via a feedback channel, which may not be explicit. For example, do sales of washing powder increase after a TV advert has been put out?

　　JEROME SEYMOUR BRUNER( 1915~ current)

　　Jerome Bruner was born on October 1, 1915 in New York City. Bruner received his A.B. from Duke University in 1937 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941. He was formally a professor of Psychology at Harvard University (1952-1972) and Oxford (1972-1980). Currently he is at the the New York University of Law. In 1960, he wrote The Process of Education, which emphasizes curriculum innovation grounded in theories of cognitive development.

　　Bruner asserts that learning is an active process in which students construct new ideas or concepts based on their current knowledge.

　　Jerome Bruner, a developmental psychologist, formulated a theory of cognitive growth that postulates: "The development of human intellectual functioning from infancy to such perfection as it may reach is shaped by a series of technological advances in the use of mind (1964)." He believed that as children develop, their actions are constrained less by immediate stimuli. Cognitive process (thoughts, beliefs) mediate the relationship between stimulus and response so that learners might maintain the same response in a changing environment or perform different responses in the same environment, depending on what they consider adaptive. In his more recent work, Bruner (1986, 1990) has expanded his theoretical framework to encompass the social and cultural aspects of learning. His constructivist theory is a general framework for instruction based upon the study of cognition. Much of the theory is linked to child development research (especially Piaget ).

　　Bruner's Main Concepts

　　A major theme in the theoretical framework of Bruner is that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge.

　　Representation

　　There are three ways to represent knowledge, which emerge in a developmental sequence:

　　Enactive representation- At the earliest ages, children represent objects in terms of their immediate sensation of them. It represented in the muscles and involves motor responses, or ways to manipulate the environment (i.e. riding a bicycle and tying a knot).

　　Iconic representation- This involves the use of mental images that stand for certain objects or evens. Iconic representation allows one to recognize objects when they are changed in minor ways (e.g. mountains with and without snow at the top).

　　Symbolic representation-This uses symbol system to encode knowledge. Prominent symbol systems are language and mathematical notation.

　　Spiral curriculum

　　Bruner emphasized teaching as a means of enhancing cognitive development. Students will not understand the concept the way teachers plan to teach it. Instruction needs to be watched to children's cognitive capabilities. The task of the instructor is to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner's current state of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned. Teachers must revisit the curriculum by teaching the same content in different ways depending on students' developmental levels. Before children can comprehend abstract mathematical operations represented enactively (with blocks) and iconically (in pictures).