  In this paper we argue that the set of wireless, mobile devices (e.g.,
portable telephones, tablet PCs, GPS navigators, media players) commonly used
by human users enables the construction of what we term a digital ecosystem,
i.e., an ecosystem constructed out of so-called digital organisms (see below),
that can foster the development of novel distributed services. In this context,
a human user equipped with his/her own mobile devices, can be though of as a
digital organism (DO), a subsystem characterized by a set of peculiar features
and resources it can offer to the rest of the ecosystem for use from its peer
DOs. The internal organization of the DO must address issues of management of
its own resources, including power consumption. Inside the DO and among DOs,
peer-to-peer interaction mechanisms can be conveniently deployed to favor
resource sharing and data dissemination. Throughout this paper, we show that
most of the solutions and technologies needed to construct a digital ecosystem
are already available. What is still missing is a framework (i.e., mechanisms,
protocols, services) that can support effectively the integration and
cooperation of these technologies. In addition, in the following we show that
that framework can be implemented as a middleware subsystem that enables novel
and ubiquitous forms of computation and communication. Finally, in order to
illustrate the effectiveness of our approach, we introduce some experimental
results we have obtained from preliminary implementations of (parts of) that
subsystem.
