The Smalltalk and Unix communities are remarkable for their pursuit of continuity, each with their own mantras. "Everything is an object sending messages!" says one. "Everything is a file streaming bytes!" says the other. In the space between, on today's net, one might argue that everything is HTTP messages. Now that there is widespread support for web services like DAV, any network-capable device can appear to be a filesystem, while maintaining its own organizational metaphors and behavior. I call these "active filesystems". While they draw upon common concepts, their potential in the contemporary computing envionment has greatly increased.

Smalltalk has long had mechanisms for interacting with the rest of the world. I'll present an active filesystem, Treaty, that enables the world to interact with Smalltalk.

This talk is dedicated to the memory of Andreas Raab.