[acjohnson55]

I think the key difference is in which side of the conversation between transmitter and receiver the intentionality is vested.

- Actors have no control over where messages come from. Actors have complete control over what other actors receive their messages.

- In a reactive model, a producer sends messages blindly, with no control over the receiver. The consumer chooses its sources specifically.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the right answer, but it is the impression I got after reading a paper on dataflow programming [1]. I'd be interested in whether anyone has any deep insights on the relative advantages of each model, and whether they're actually equivalent on some level.

[1] http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/176887/files/DeprecatingOb...