Panasonic and PanaHome, a subsidiary concentrating on residential construction, will build the homes as well as equip them with networking and electronic devices.

FORBES: Panasonic's Next Product: A Small Green Town

Take for example Internet Protocol (IP), which is the networking standard used to route electronic information packets around the world.

WHITEHOUSE: Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

Walking past the Greek tailor in my neighborhood, I felt the need to extol the old-world version of social networking, which is all about schmoozing without any electronic devices or urgency.

FORBES: Social Networking for Men, Old Style

Yet anybody with a blog or a social-networking page is effectively treating it as a gigantic electronic dinner party, in which conversation is free and informal, friends can keep track of each other's most mundane experiences and any thoughts that take one's fancy can be instantly shared with anybody else who owns a computer.

ECONOMIST: Tech.view: Everybody does it | The

Inside, however, hundreds of employees in blue overcoats tend banks of squat pick and place machines that are punching as many as 8, 000 electronic components into a circuit board that will soon become part of a new networking product.

FORBES: Made In Silicon Valley