Generativity in essence describes a self-contained system from which its user draws an independent ability to create, generate, or produce new content unique to that system without additional help or input from the system's original creators. In semiotics

Semiotics

Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...

 or epistemology, generativity refers to a form of communication that possesses compositionality and the ability to construct complex messages. The philosopher Daniel Dennett

Daniel Dennett

Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...

 has argued that animals cannot have wants or desires in the sense that humans do because they lack a language with compositionality and generativity. Gordon Brittan disagrees with this evaluation.

Technological generativity generally describes the quality of the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 and modern computers that allows people unrelated to the creation and operation of either to produce content in the form of applications and in the case of the Internet, blogs. Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain

Jonathan L. Zittrain is a US professor of Internet law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a faculty co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society...

 has expressed concern that many recent technologies such as DVR

DVR

The initialism "DVR", when used by itself, can refer to:* Digital video recorder* Discrete valuation ring* Distance-vector routing* Direct volume rendering* Derwent Valley Railway * Devco Railway...

 and GPS have moved away from the generative, two-way aspects of the personal computer and the Internet.

In Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...

’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, generativity is a struggle against stagnation that ascends during adulthood. Generativity in the psychosocial sense refers to the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation and is said to stem from a sense of optimism about humanity.

History

The term "generativity" was coined by the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950 to denote "a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation." It can be defined as creativity between the generations. Generativity can be expressed in literally hundreds of ways, from raising a child to stopping a tradition of abuse, from writing a family history to starting a new organization. One can try to "make a difference" with one's life, to "give back," to "take care" of one's community and one's planet.

Jonathan Zittrain defines the term, "Generativity is a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences." - The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. (Pg.70)

External links

• http://bostonreview.net/BR33.2/zittrain.php
• http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/book-review-2008-06-2-admin.ars
• http://www.etchouse.com/cpd/archives/001117.html
• http://blurringborders.com/tag/generativity/
• http://futureoftheinternet.org/moving-towards-generativity