The Invariant Communication Design Principle (ICDP): A Scientific Law of Universal Meaning Preservation and Its Singular Violation in Digital Communication

This paper introduces the Invariant Communication Design Principle (ICDP), communication theory’s first formally stated scientific law. The ICDP specifies four structural invariants—Identity, Continuity, Determinism, and Responsibility—that jointly determine the conditions under which meaning is preserved across transmission. Drawing on semiotics, biosemiotics, information theory, medium theory, and platform studies, the paper demonstrates that every known nondigital communication system—biological, ecological, neural, embodied, analog, and symbolic—satisfies all four invariants. Digital communication is shown to be the sole exception: discretization, sampling, quantization, compression, platform mediation, algorithmic recontextualization, and synthetic generation violate each invariant categorically rather than by degree. The ICDP provides a universal structural account of meaning preservation and a framework for understanding the epistemic, social, and communicative consequences of digital mediation and AI-generated synthetic communication.