To: All Computer Users
From: Davis Remmel
Date: 2018-02-11 12:16pm
Subject: Smalltalk

I've been around computers for a while, and I've read a lot of the 
history of them. Smalltalk is a key part, that I believed I understood. 
While I knew it was a pure object-oriented language, that concept never 
really rooted itself in my mind. It wasn't until my girlfriend, Chi, 
started picking it up on my recommendation that I began to take a 
deeper look.

Smalltalk is a great introductory language, because it doesn't have 
much of a syntax. Objects are pure, and all computing is really done 
through message passing. I've always liked this idea, the simplicity 
and elegance is truly beautiful. When Chi started learning it, I began 
re-learning it as well. Then I began thinking, "what if everything was 
Smalltalk?"

If we had scanners that connected to a network, and exposed themselves 
as objects with methods, we wouldn't have much to worry about drivers; 
implementing one would be trivial for any computer user. If we had 
keyboards, mice, or headphones that exposed themselves as Smalltalk 
objects, we could inherit the same thing: an easy-to-implement 
solution. Same with displays, and MIDI keyboards, and even peripherals 
yet-unthought-of.

If we had Smalltalk everywhere, the insides of our computers could be 
glued together with a Smalltalk Bus. A bus, where each device was 
itself a computer, that communicated only through the passing of 
messages. Network cards, sound cards, peripherals: they would all speak 
Smalltalk through the Smalltalk Bus.

Processors could even be implemented with objects in-mind from the 
beginning. We could destroy our legacy x68 architecture, and evolve to 
CPUs with thousands, perhaps millions, of RISC cores. Each core could 
run one (or more) objects, and contain RAM on-die that would decrease 
latency (since each Smalltalk object is its own computer, with its own 
CPU and RAM). Perhaps, these cores wouldn't even need be complex; they 
could be single-instruction processors that run at tens or hundreds of 
gigahertz.

I'm continuing to explore Smalltalk as my primary computing interface. 
I hope that one day, it will be all there is.