What’s Supranet?

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The Supranet connects embedded computers, wireless networks, and bi-directional interfacing technology, allowing applications to adapt to various devices. Mobile business is the driving force behind its development, connecting the physical and electronic worlds through wireless technologies. The Supranet is evolving into a virtual world that mirrors the real world with increasing accuracy.

The Supranet is the network communication infrastructure that represents the symbiotic relationship between the electronic and physical worlds. The crux of the Supranet concept is the connectivity of embedded computers, wireless networks, bi-directional interfacing technology, and applications that adapt to various devices. The mobile business, or m-business, is considered to be the main driving force behind the continued development of the Supranet.

This term was first coined in 2000 by the US-based IT research and consulting firm Gartner, Inc. as part of its framework analysis on converged communications. The concept was further developed as part of a series of seminal research papers published by Gartner employees during 2001. Over the years, the term has never become as ubiquitous as the word “Internet,” but some of the definitions and some subsumed terms that fleshed out the concept became popular, and many of the underlying concepts and predictions proved prescient.

The word physical, or p-world, which is part of the Supranet definition, includes tangible objects such as paper, houses, people and vehicles that need to be connected to the electronic world, or e-world, of devices, such as phones, computers, cameras and televisions. According to the Supranet concept, e-world devices are connected to the p-world via an embedded computer with a bi-directional interface that allows the device to transmit identifying information about the user or uniquely tag the transmitted information. Wireless networking and intelligent application architecture that can scale across devices and enable profile management are what power the exchange of information between worlds.

Gartner theorized that mobile business development would drive the development of the Supranet. Mobile technologies, such as Bluetooth, GPS, geotagging and Wireless Application Protocol, which make communication between the physical and electronic worlds simpler and more secure, support the Supranet mobile lifestyle. People who use Supranet can be connected at any time and place and can be located and traced through the devices they use, to the advantage of electronic commerce.

A natural progression of the Supranet is the growing convergence of the physical and electronic worlds into a virtual world that mirrors the real world with increasing accuracy. Products, such as game systems, that convert three-dimensional motion in the real world into motion in a digital landscape are an example of the Supranet at work. Many of the location mapping and geo-tagging products offered by other Internet companies are also practical examples of the Supranet concept.




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