[Cthulhu_]

This was the Scala / Akka approach, I'm sure there's similar ones in other languages; basically you'd work via communicating, 'pushing' messages to actors instead of calling functions. From a developer's point of view, it then didn't matter if that message went to an actor on the same machine or something halfway across the world. "Don't communicate by sharing memory, share memory by communicating." is the modern adage.