An admiring comment:
The extent to which people are developing and proposing visionary solutions in Smalltalk is mind-boggling. No other software invention in my memory has inspired such a flood of innovations. If not for the fact that the inventors participate in this mailing list, I would think they were gods or aliens instead of "merely" talented human beings. Maybe it's the close collaboration they maintained over the years that allows them to create something greater than they would have as individuals. If so, creating a collaborative morphic world in Squeak is the most important project any of us can work on. My congratulations and encouragement to those of you who are already engaged!
Ed
We have implemented a working MOO prototype in VisualWorks, mostly just a framework with limited functionality. We are now designing another version, possibly to be functional around the end of the year.
I've implemented: o. speech synthesis (text-to-speech and singing voices) o. simple gestures synthesis (2D faces, SouthPark-like toons) o. 3D facial animation (the Waters' muscles model)
In this picture, an Morphic book wouldn't be found by reaching out across the network and loading it; instead, there'd be a more or less far away part of your image (maybe dressed up as an Alice world) that would let you wander around and find the book you wanted. Perahaps the author would hand it to you, if he happened to be around.
While working, instead of the discussion Swiki, there'd be small knots of others, gathered around places of interest to them. You could glance around and see if anyone was nearby, possibly interested in what you were up to.