Let’s briefly discuss fundamental types of communication. As always, there are several facets of types, and we will try to review the most important ones.
Direction of communication
Probably, the most important set of types is the one that defines the directions of communication:
- Single direction communication (simplex) — when sender just send the data to the receiver, and that is it. There is no interaction during communication, it is something that we have right now — I communicate some information, but you don’t communicate me at this moment anything.
- Bi-directional communication (duplex) — when both participants communicate actively to each other, both are receivers and senders. There are two important subtypes:
- Non-simultaneous communication (half duplex, sometimes also simplex) — the sender communicates the message and receiver waits until the message is fully received without any interruptions. Then it sends response message to the sender.
- Simultaneous communication (full duplex) — the sender is both receiver, and the receiver is both sender simultaneously, so both of them can send the messages simultaneously. While humans are not supporting it in the same way as machines (for instance, like two machines sending files to each other simultaneously), actually we are able to talk to each other, interrupt each other and especially sense each other (get the nonverbal feedback) during communication.