The present invention provides a representation and encapsulation of active computing environments. In accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention a "compute capsule" is implemented. Each compute capsule serves to represent and encapsulate an active computing environment. An active computing environment comprises one or more active processes and their associated state information. The associated state information is information in a form that can be understood by any computer and tells the computer exactly what the processes in the capsule are doing at any given time. In this way, the compute capsule is a host-independent encapsulation that can be suspended on one computer, moved to a new computer, and re-started on the new computer where the new computer is binary compatible.