Engineering information is document-oriented. Large documents, even sheaths of documents, are exchanged, specifying in great detail exactly what to do, and how to do it. Modern information technology (IT) is based on services. Service exchanges are minimal, the smallest exchange able to specify results, and do not specify the means of performance at all.
For the last 50 years, IT has moved far faster than have engineered systems, the things we can touch, inhabit, or ride around in. For the next 50 years, when engineered systems will need to evolve as fast as IT has for the last 50, we will need a middle ground, between document and service call. This is the challenge of configuration as shared configuration will enable big systems to interact as nimbly as IT does today.