Hyperconnectivity is brought to you by an explosion in cell phones and in networked sensors for everything.
Eric Paulos of Carnegie Mellon University is proposing to converge these two hyperconnectivity trends by shifting cell phones from being purely personal communications devices to being "networked mobile personal measurement instruments."
For example, many cell phones have GPS positioning capabilities and many are starting to integrate motion detectors (e.g. for Wii-style gaming). Combining these two into a massively distributed, earthquake early warning system may reap huge benefits for science and mankind.
Innovation comes from interdisciplinary thinking such as exemplified by Dr Paulos.