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What are the essential architectural elements that are likely to give any particular approach to building controls systems a long tenure? Many aspects can easily be identified by their negative value, such as dependence on particular language(s), operating systems, or particular board/bus technologies. In addition, localizing the human expertise to one sponsoring institution, or even to a specialized controls community, can limit the lifetime. I will argue here that the fundamental positive aspect that gives the greatest endurance is "decoupling, decoupling, decoupling." The principle of decoupling applies in both large and small contexts, both technical and social. I will attempt to show that among the key contributors to achieving this desired state are very stable, very narrow "intellectual" bottlenecks (realized as wire protocols or APIs) at appropriate levels; no requirement for centralized entities (both physical and social); and a high degree of asynchronous communication.
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