''Hyperconnectivity'' is a term invented by Canadian social scientists

Anabel Quan-Haase Anabel Quan-Haase (born 1970s) is a Canadian academic and published author. She is currently a full professor at the University of Western Ontario located in London, Ontario, where she is jointly appointed to the Faculty of Information and Media ...

and

Barry Wellman Barry Wellman (born 1942) is a Canadian-American sociologist and is the co-director of the Toronto-based international NetLab Network. His areas of research are community sociology, the Internet, human-computer interaction and social structur ...

, arising from their studies of person-to-person and person-to-machine communication in networked organizations and networked societies. The term refers to the use of multiple means of communication, such as

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

, face-to-face contact and

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

information services. Hyperconnectivity is also a trend in

computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

in which all things that can or should communicate through the network will communicate through the network. This encompasses person-to-person, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication. The trend is fueling large increases in bandwidth demand and changes in communications because of the complexity, diversity and integration of new applications and devices using the network. The communications equipment maker

Nortel Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec, ...

has recognized hyperconnectivity as a pervasive and growing market condition that is at the core of their business strategy. CEO Mike Zafirovski and other executives have been quoted extensively in the press referring to the hyperconnected era. Apart from network-connected devices such as landline telephones,

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

s and computers, newly-connectable devices range from mobile devices such as PDAs,

MP3 players A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

GPS receivers A satellite navigation device (satnav device) is a user equipment that uses one or more of several global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) to calculate the device's geographical position and provide navigational advice. Depending on the ...

and

cameras A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

through to an ever wider collection of machines including cars refrigerators and coffee makers, all equipped with embedded wireline or wireless networking capabilities. The IP enablement of all devices is a fundamental limitation of IP version 4, and

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

is the enabling technology to support massive address explosions. There are other, independent, uses of the term: * The U.S. Army describes hyperconnectivity as a digitization of the battlefield where all military elements are connected. * Hyperconnectivity is used in medical terminology to explain billions and billions of neurons creating excessive connections, within the brain associated with schizophrenia, or epileptic seizures or DS

Examples

Some examples to support the existence of this accelerating trend to hyperconnectivity include the following facts and assertions: * About 2.8 billion mobile phones are already in use with another 1.6 million being added every day (''The Economist'', April 28, 2007) * The network will need to accommodate a trillion devices, most of them wireless, in the next 15–20 years' time (David Clark, MIT) * Sales of wireless modules for devices, sensors and machines are forecast to grow to $400 million by 2011 (Harbor Research) * Tens of billions of e-mails, mobile text messages and instant messages are being sent through the world's public networks each day (''The Economist'', April 28, 2007)

Examples

References

Further reading