[shalabhc]

> I don't even think you need a VM, really.

I mean a VM as in the idea that you are programming an abstract thing, not a physical thing. Not a VM as in a running program. You could emulate the memory mapper in software first - hardware would be an optimization.

The important point is 'memory mapper' sounds like the semantics would be `write(object_ip, at_this_offset, these_bytes)`, but what you really want IMO is `send(object_ip, this_message)`. That is, the memory is private and the pure message is constructed outside the object.

You still need the mapping system to map the object's unique virtual id to a physical machine, physical object. So having one IP for each of these objects could be one way.

Alan Kay mentioned David Reed's 1978 thesis (http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/pubs/pdf/MIT-LCS-TR-20...) which develops these ideas (still reading). In fact, a lot of 'recently' popular ideas seem to be related to the stuff in that thesis (e.g. 'psuedo-time')