Can you expand (or point to a resource that expands) on the "internet as extensible object oriented network service" concept? I'm having difficulty grasping what the key differences between that and the HTTP approach look like.
My understanding of HTTP is essentially "send request with resource locator to server, receive response usually with document" which seems at face value similar to "send message to object, receive message back".
Well, before the development of fat Javascript heavy AJAXy type apps, with websockets, webrtc, etc. the difference was more marked.
A huge difference in granularity, at least. But also a conceptual one. In MOO type worlds the 'physical' objects one 'sees' in the [textual] 'world' are directly associated with programmatic objects (w/ prototypical inheritance but nicer IMHO than Javascript's).
And the environment was such that any MOO user could author -- by creating objects [cloning prototypes] and -- if they had programmer permissions -- by adding "verbs" (methods) to those objects.
And code written in the language was well sandboxed with decent permissions systems and a runtime that enforced good behaviour on programs. Tho in the early days of LambdaMOO it was somewhat easy to DOS the system, that got fixed.
Authoring was easy, barrier to entry low, but there was a consistent metaphor: users in adventure-game-like rooms, with objects that could be manipulated through English-like commands, and a descriptive narrative applied throughout.
I can't help but think this would all be much cooler in this day and age with the arrival of robust natural language parsing, 'augmented reality', and so on.
My understanding of HTTP is essentially "send request with resource locator to server, receive response usually with document" which seems at face value similar to "send message to object, receive message back".