Kay was at least as inspired by biological processes -- bacteria transmitting chemical signals to one another, for instance -- as he was by computer networks.
I think the big thing that Kay missed was asynchronicity. What Kay was thinking of when he coined the term "object oriented" -- rather than C++ -- was a sort of synchronous actor model in which the actor would always wait for a response after sending a message. This maps nicely onto function calls, but considerably more power can be had by letting the actor optionally continue doing stuff while awaiting a response. Bacteria continue to metabolize after sending chemical signals to their brethren after all!
As I've seen it said, Erlang is Smalltalk done right.
I think the big thing that Kay missed was asynchronicity. What Kay was thinking of when he coined the term "object oriented" -- rather than C++ -- was a sort of synchronous actor model in which the actor would always wait for a response after sending a message. This maps nicely onto function calls, but considerably more power can be had by letting the actor optionally continue doing stuff while awaiting a response. Bacteria continue to metabolize after sending chemical signals to their brethren after all!
As I've seen it said, Erlang is Smalltalk done right.