An article on such a system hit HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9484682

Thanks for the pointer. Project sites include:

http://named-data.net & http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking

PARC: http://www.ccnx.org & http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking

NSF Future Internet Architecture: http://www.nets-fia.net

Thanks to both of you for the links. Although it's an interesting premise, I think we can safely assume any large-scale practical implementations of this kind of technology are some way off, so unfortunately I don't think it changes my initial conclusion: we're likely to see more locking down and partitioning of today's Internet for a while, before any more open and robust long-term solutions take hold (perhaps based on the kind of alternative future architectures you mentioned).