Autonomous computational processes ("agents") representing application-specific data items (e.g., representations of real-world entities or events, any-media documents, models, etc.) are provided with application-independent methods and data structures to spread information in a global topology even when the agents' ability to sense or communicate with other agents is limited relative to the extent of the overall collection. The invention specifies three agent roles (Gossip Producer, Gossip Sharer, Gossip Consumer) that define three unique agent processes from which the information sharing emerges. Any agent in a given application may execute one or more of these roles at any given time and additional agent movement in the chosen topology aids the information spreading.
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