Christian Lölkes

For messages to be able to be transmitted and saved, they must be coded and thereby are transformed into »Codierte Informationen« [Coded Information]. A variety of processes and algorithms ensure that the content of the message remains unaltered in this coding process in every medium: first, the information has to be prepared for the physics of the relevant transmission or storage medium. Second, an array of security mechanisms ensures that even if the data is partially lost, the content can often be reconstructed without any errors thanks to redundancy.

In the present, shared mediums, such as air, play a challenging role, because, in the face of physical limitations, ever more participants who are ever more separate from one another want to transmit data via a shared medium. Here too, coding comes into play, as it uses a variety of tricks and rules to divide the medium among the participants.