IMHO, the ideas about non-volatile memory are a distraction and not a very fundamental or interesting detail of future systems. But the core proposal of combining https://squeak.org/ on top of https://oberon.org is really quite an exciting idea and could be a lot of FOSS fun.
As he says, Squeak already runs on bare metal, so why have a version with Oberon below? He himself admits in the talk that a system as he proposes would have two languages rather than one (i.e., go against the spirit of SmallTalk systems and LISP machines that he praises earlier in his task).
There are Smalltalk ports on top of LuaJIT and Oberon ports on top of LuaJUT, so there is at least one reality where the two languages sit side-by-side (rather than on top of each other as the talk proposes); see Michael Engel's talk on Vimeo for more details.
Because TBH Smalltalk isn't a great choice for low-level code such as OSes and drivers?
I hadn't seen Engel's talk at that time, but I have now, and we've chatted. There is a tiny tiny outside chance I might go and do a PhD with him... :-)
