15 Looking to the Future

This chapter might deserve a warning label: “Highly Speculative.” I said earlier that all architectures are creations of their time and address different requirements as times change. In this chapter, I am going to offer my own views about future requirements (since, to be durable, an architecture should be forward looking), and then I am going to offer my own thoughts as to what a suitable architecture might be. However, these ideas have never been prototyped or otherwise tested by fleshing them out into a complete design, so this chapter might best be read as a possible research agenda for someone who wants to explore some new ideas.