Design Principle N.1

- Select ingredients that favor flexibility and genericity.

An ingredient is defined as a material or an abstract building block of the architecture. Therefore, it could be a hardware, a software or even a more abstract concept, e.g. a paradigm.

This principle says that the best candidates are those that favor flexibility and genericity of design.

Design Principle N.2

- Generalize the application of selected ingredients as much as possible.

Since an ingredient have been selected, it is fundamental to apply it not only as comprehensively as possible, but also as deep as possible. In other words, the best approach is to take full advantage of this new ingredient, i.e. is it worth to insert a new ingredient that brings only punctual benefits?

Design Principle N.3

- Design for built-in dynamic compose-ability, hierarchical modularity, and recursivity.

Dynamic compose-ability and hierarchical modularity are bio-inspired approaches. Different degrees of hierarchical modularity were observed in human brains and in the nervous system of C. elegans nematode. The idea is to create a recursive structure of digital entities and content. In other words, to use the same structure at same different levels.

Design Principle N.4

- Design for built-in security, privacy, trust, and traceability.

Needless to say to think in security since the beginning is fundamental.

Design Principle N.5

- Support mobility and redundancy.

Future ICT architectures need to support mobility and redundancy of everything.

Design Principle N.6

- Design for built-in evolvability, sustainability, and business ecosystem.

Technology evolution is becoming so fast that new designs could become obsolete very quickly. An approach to deal with this situation is to integrate technology evolution on the architecture itself. This can accommodate accelerated developing cycles we are experiencing today (online development) as well as the need for fast prototyping and experimentation (understand-by-building). Software frameworks can evolve based on transparent and distribute hardware resources. Positive/negative evolutionary feedbacks could occur within the architectures, accelerating technology evolution even more.

Design Principle N.7

- Virtualize real world and integrate real-virtual worlds.

Real world resources need to be integrated with the virtual world services and applications. To virtualize means to create virtual entities that behave like the real ones. Those virtual entities share the available substrate resources through a digital market of exposed resources. Software-defined networking means to establish networks where equipment functionalities are controlled by software. Therefore, SDN and virtualization are closely related. The integration of real-virtual worlds also encompasses the Internet of Things, Cyber Physical Systems, and Real World Internet approaches.

Design Principle N.8

- Reduce human intervention, sustain *-awareness, and facilitate migration.

In airplanes, "the fly-by-wire system allows aircraft's computers to perform functions without the pilot's input, as in systems that automatically help stabilize the aircraft", Wikipedia. It is a kind of autopilot. Why not to create autopilots for the ICT? Of course, this step requires sensorial, control, and regulatory systems. *-awareness means systems that are "aware" of several aspects at the same time, e.g. network-aware, service-aware, regulation-aware, energy-aware, etc. Finally, migration from current technologies to the new ones need to be considered in design.

Design Principle N.9

- Act accordingly to the meaning/context of information/knowledge.

According to principle N.8, we could expect an exponential growth on the number of digital assistants, helpers, proxies, etc. Those entities need to make sound decisions, aligned with human language, interests, preferences. The idea is to create solutions that can approximate human and machine languages.

Design Principle N.10

- Integrate ingredients in a cohesive and synergistic way.

After selecting all the ingredients, they need to be integrated in a cohesive and synergistic way. It means to create essential, beauty, designs and implementations. See http://antonioalberti.blogspot.kr/2011/10/beauty-of-design-beleza-do-design.html.

Design Principle N.11

- Make the design “as simple as possible, but not simpler”, Einstein.

It is unnecessary to comment.