"Rather than design master plans, we designers of systems should instead design federations of little systems linked together by extensible protocols and generic interfaces. This way we can create complex systems without having to explicitly define them. These protocols and interfaces themselves are systems which, in order to work, must constrain what can be said."

I'd be very interested to see a companion piece that investigates specific working examples of this approach. Most importantly, I'd like to see examples of systems of this kind that can actually be attributed to a single person or small group.