A method is implemented by a node for implementing computational transformations conveyed in a content centric networking (CCN) request by a computation engine. The method includes receiving a CCN request containing a unique resource identifier (URI) and a computation field, decoding the computation field to determine a computation pipeline, retrieving a first content object identified by the URI, executing the computation pipeline with the first content object as input, and encoding a result of the computation pipeline as a second content object.