Tom --

Funny you should bring this up ....

Cheers,

Alan

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At 3:58 AM -0800 9/29/99, Tom Morgan wrote:
>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