Am 15.11.2003 um 10:21 schrieb Diego Gomez Deck:
>
> One problem I see in the current receiver/message model in Smalltalk 
> is:
> The receiver is so hard-coded.
>
> We always have an explicit receiver.  A type of "message in a bottle"
> (without an explicit receiver) is something to experiment.  A message
> without an explicit receiver can different answers from different
> receivers (did you try to shout in a place full os people ;))
>
Yes. If you look at biology, then most of the "messages" (called 
signals)
are never sent to a specific reveiver, but just "dumped in the 
environment",
were all possible reveivers can pick them up or ignore them.

So these signals are much more like the "pheromone trails" in StarLogo
or a Linda Tupple-space than squeak message sends...

Another thing we have no analogy for is the "strength" of the message: 
In
biological systems, many processes are guided not by "got a signal/got
no signal", but by the strength or duration of the signal. e.g. 
gradients of
signals play a *huge* role in embryo development.

    Marcus

--
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de