A system, method and related data structures for discovering and describing computing resources available at various computing devices, and for exposing those resources as services that are addressable by software applications. The data describing the resources is arranged according to an identity-based schema. The computing resources may include, for example, storage capacity, bandwidth, processing power, input methods and mechanism, and rendering methods. The method and system are identity-based, whereby a user (with an identity) has access to the distributed resources commensurate with that identity.