Connectedness oriented communication: Fostering a sense of connectedness to augment social relationships

This paper proposes a novel concept for network communication media, called "Connectedness Oriented Communication". While traditional network communication technologies focus on how to precisely transmit the contents of messages, "Connectedness Oriented Communication" is intended to support and augment social relationships among people by fostering a sense of connectedness among them. "Connectedness Oriented Communication" aims at achieving this by exchanging the status and presence information of these people. In this paper, the model and design methodologies of "Connectedness Oriented Communication" are presented. In addition, example systems that we have constructed are described. Issues towards the further development of "Connectedness Oriented Communication" are also addressed.