Unlike direct interaction based on message passing, indirect interaction takes place between agents as they make and observe persistent changes to their shared environment. The dining philosophers and foraging ants problems illustrate the characteristics that distinguish indirect from direct interaction, such as persistence, space and time decoupling, dynamic binding of recipient, and lack of intent. We point out that indirect interaction is an important phenomenon in many different fields within and outside computer science, including open systems, and merits explicit formal modeling.
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