This was very helpful.  Thanks.  The second link made it sound very smalltalkish to me -- it sounded like an OODBMS that real world users could relate to.  So I followed the link at the Wikipedia article and was surprised to learn that NewtonScript was a prototype-based inheritance language modelled on Self.<p>If the secret sauce is a user-accessible OODBMS written in a prototype-based scripting language, would it not be possible to build a Data Soup system in JavaScript?  No need to bring the device back -- just replicate what people liked about it.