I'm thinking the next big step is to build ASIC's with hierarchical memory sub-systems that can quickly load and execute either x86 or ARM instructions, kind of like binary run-times implemented in hardware, and then boot operating systems on them so that programs don't have to worry about the physical memory address layout or disk file-systems, and then finally run a compiled version of the JVM that includes hot-spot. Then we would all be able to run Java, and it would be pretty fast, probably faster than any other implementation, and totally capable of integrating with the entire Java ecosystem.

What you're describing sounds like how computers work now. What I see as the logical next step is to design chips that use Javascript as their instruction set, because in the future, every layer underneath Javascript will just be overhead, because everything will be Javascript. We might as well start planning for it now.

like a chip that runs asm.js directly as its instruction set, and a js interpreter written in asm.js, with javascript runtime semantics implemented in hardware?

kind of like the espruino but even moreso?

I didn't know of asm.js and espruino before you mentioned them, but it looks like the future may be coming sooner than I thought.

What I really want to say is that you can turn my kernel calls into JSON-RPC when you pry my ARM assembler from my cold, dead fingers.