In [[computer science]], '''interactive computation''' is a [[mathematical model]] for [[computation]] that involves [[input/output]] communication with the external world ''during'' computation. This is in contrast to the traditional understanding of computation which assumes reading input only before computation and writing output only after computation, thus defining a kind of "closed" computation.
The [[Church-Turing thesis]] attempts to define computation and computability in terms of [[Turing machines]]. Because the Turing machine model only provides an answer to the question of what computability of ''functions'' means, but interactive tasks are not always reducible to functions,{{clarify|date=November 2018}} it fails to capture a broader intuition of computation and computability. It was not until recently{{when|date=November 2018}} that the theoretical computer science community realized the necessity to define adequate mathematical models of interactive computation.
