[snip]

> Of course you're right that there is NST, but I think that 
> the original
> goals of Smalltalk and Squeak are not as well represented in 
> the mission
> statement as they could be.  I like Dan's statement from several years
> ago:
> 
> "Our number one commitment is to an exquisite personal computing
> environment. Imagine a system as immediate and tactile as a sketch
> pad, in which you can effortlessly mingle writing, drawing, painting,
> and all the structured leverage of computer science. Moreover, imagine
> that every aspect of that system is described in itself and equally
> amenable to examination and composition. Perhaps this system also
> extends out over the Internet, including and leveraging off the work
> of others. You get the idea: it's the Holy Grail of computer
> science. All and everything."
> 
> Is there room for something like this in the Guides mission statement?
> I think that there should be; even if the Guides can't be expected to
> point the way themselves, it should be an explicit priority within the
> community to support such efforts (at least verbally, until we figure
> out more concrete ways to support them).  
> 

[snip]

> 
> We had one with Squeak Central, a very Grand Vision indeed.  I think
> that this vision is still shared by a large enough segment of
> Squeakers that it warrants official recognition by the Guides.
> 
> It is important to remember that it is because of this type of vision
> that overlapping windows and OO programming even exist.  Without this
> vision, we can clean Squeak up and make it one of the best tools out
> there for a wide variety of applications, but we will never transcend
> the current Squeak in the way that Smalltalk transcended what came
> before it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 
> There is a large difference between the spirit exemplified by Dan's
> quote above and the current mission statement.  I propose that the 
> mission statement be amended to include something similar to Dan's
> quote.
> 
> 

Joshua, I second that motion!

I also liked the text that Andreas quoted from http://www.squeak.org/about/headed-99-98.html :

	"We believe that Squeak can be a first-class authoring environment
for active media, along the lines of Hypercard done right. We believe that
Squeak can be a system that one could approach as an arithmetic engine, a
string-processing engine, a graphics engine, or a music engine, and be able
to probe deeper and deeper in any area, emerging with a complete
understanding of these areas, enlightened by an understading of how they are
all the same, and empowered with the ability to mold the system into any new
configuration that makes sense. We believe that Squeak can be as small as
any rival system, making it a great base for interesting PDA software, and
we believe that Squeak can be nearly as fast as any rival system, making it
a reasonable choice for even the most serious software development work."