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NovaGenesis means new beginning. What if there is no Internet now? How could it be designed and deployed? This is the motto question that motivated many research projects under the banner of the so called "Future Internet" (FI) research. In this context, NovaGenesis is a novel information architecture aimed at offering an alternative to current ones, e.g. TCP/IP, ZigBee, etc.
The idea of NovaGenesis appeared in 2008 during an academic review I did regarding emerging research areas in computer networks. In 2009, during a conference (IWT 2009) I do decided do go ahead with this project. The name NovaGenesis was selected in 2011. The figure bellow is the vision I did for NovaGenesis before selecting its name. This vision comprehends many layers, from small hardware to global distributed systems. The fundamental layer is the hardware, composed by many embedded systems (1 to 6). Then, there are some middleware running on operating systems, like Linux (A to E). Finally, there are the distributed systems that spread globally. My main task was on selecting the paradigms and technological ingredients that could be integrated to fulfill this vision. Then, to select the design principles to continue.
The figure bellow is another vision from the same epoch. Obviously, it is inspired in nature. It covers self-similar structures from nanometers up to planetary scale. For instance, addressing and routing are requirements at all levels. Naming and name resolution are another foundation. For a detailed overview of these ingredients, please check our paper publications here: ResearchGate
The figure bellow shows an initial idea that led to NG model. In the bottom layer, there are the physical things. I mean the molecular substrates, for example the bodies, devices, cables, antennas, lampposts, etc. They suffer from natural pressures, like energy fingerprint, ubiquity, deployment, costs, among many others. The layer above is done by low level software, for instance firmware, middleware, operating systems, i.e. basic software. NovaGenesis works with the idea of self-organizing physical world representatives. In other words, services that represent physical world entities or other basic software. Nowadays, this representatives are called Digital Tiwns. They provide access to networking, storage, visualization and information processing functions. All these fundamental software requires logical control, operation and management. This is provided by a self-organizing, distributed controllers and managers. Here, cryptocurrencies can be employed to create a digital market of physical and virtual resources. Blockchain can be employed to unequivocally registry transactions and contracts. Above this layer, autonomous and cognitive computing can be employed to reduce human intervention, making the overall architecture more scalable. Finally, we have the people defining rules, regulations, policies. One can even expect AI will help on this in the future, after a technological singularity. Moral and ethics are the main concerns in this level. Services and applications suffer evolutionary pressures driven by people and their institutions, i.e. governs, companies, academia, etc. User experience is another concern, especially regarding smart cities and Internet of things.
Observe that services and applications are pushed to address requirements not only from people (and IA), but also from physical world (e.g. sustainability, energy fingerprint, etc). Therefore, evolution of protocols and services is granted by refinement of dynamic contracts. In other words, only protocols and services that best fit on these drawbacks will prevail. This generates an spiral of self-improvement. In contrast to current Internet, where protocols remain the same for decades.
When designing NG, I tried to converge as much as subjects as envisioned in previous studies. The figure bellow illustrates what has been explored in this matter. I envisioned that any new Internet should converge many subjects, including those related to digital entities life-cycling, physical world resources, self-organizing properties, context-awareness,service-oriented properties (which latter was included in modern architectures as NFV and SDN), programmable infrastructure, and specific/general artificial intelligence. This figure is from 2021, an epoch when I was trying to figure out what could be enablers for a future information architecture like NovaGenesis.
NovaGenesis is a dream coming true, a life long project that wants to inspire future generations towards an essential universal information infrastructure. Let's work together on it!!