I've been noticing how lonesome it is inside an image.

There are lots of strong place based/community elements
which surround Squeak.  These are currently formed
by the basic networked apps of email, the discussion Swiki,
the mail archives, and so on.

There is now lots of machinery which is available  which
would allow basic collaborative support right inside
a running image (and there are some spacey ones imagineable
using the 3D stuff that feel like 'Snowcrash')

The kinds of things that I have in mind revolve around
establishing a sense of 'place', which is shared, 'embodiment'
of you the user explicitly some how in the interface and
some amount of 'awareness' of the presence of
others in the shared place, all done with a light enough
touch that we don't end up with avatar fashion shows.

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.

Over the course of a few years, I have seen naive users
comfortably navigate incredibly complex  graph structures, when
they are presented with a place based metaphor.

I am not sure how universally appealing these interface
metaphors are, but they seem to be captivating for
at least some portion of the population.

I remember one posting about trying to incorporate the ICQ
protocols into Squeak.

Are there others padding around this collaborative territory?

   ...Tom M