XPost: rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.science   
   From: bap@shrdlu.com   
      
   On 19/01/14 18:34, Doc O'Leary wrote:   
      
      
   > My main question is why such a delivery service always seems limited to   
   > one industry (e.g., lunch boxes).  I mean, it should be pretty easy (I   
   > did it for my network) to abstract the need to just move *things* in   
   > boxes.  It makes no sense to me, for example, that FedEx and mail and   
   > pizzas and newspapers (and on and on) all use completely isolated local   
   > delivery networks.  At the same time, I can't buy groceries from my   
   > local co-op because they don't do deliveries at all, even though they're   
   > right next to the pizza shop that does!   
      
   The roots of my 'pod' system lies in an idea I had about 40 years ago   
   when I first studied object-oriented programming languages. I noted at   
   the time that the essence of shopping for something was to send a   
   message to an object persuading it to change its ownership and location.   
   I think we are now at the point where we could implement that.   
      
   It fits quite neatly into a possible future version of the HTTP protocol   
   used for web pages although HTTP didn't exist at that time. The other   
   thing I though of at that time (and wrote about in a letter to Byte) was   
   an encoding scheme for non-latin characters.   
      
   --   
   bap@shrdlu.com   
      
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