Generativity

           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 or epistemology,
generativity refers to a form of communication that possesses
compositionality and the ability to construct complex messages. The
philosopher Daniel Dennett 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 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
has expressed concern that many recent technologies such as DVR and
GPS have moved away from the generative, two-way aspects of the
personal computer and the Internet.
            In Erik Erikson’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.
           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.

            Anderson explains, "The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail." Anderson identifies three 'forces'. First, more stuff is being produced. Technology and the internet make it cheaper and easier to record and distribute your own songs, publish your own writings and so on. This lengthens the tail. Second, there is better access to niches, again thanks to the reach and economies on the net. This fattens the tail. Final, Search and recommendations connect supply and demand. This drives business from hits to niches.

            Anderson explains that the Long Tail is an example of a power law, and that "power laws come about when you have three conditions that are variety, inequality, and network effects such as word of mouth and reputation, which tend to amplify differences in quality. Anderson decodes the mysteries of online marketing, Internet-based commerce and other New Age economic realities. His calculations, public feedback and extensive research offer more than just statistics for the sake of proving his point: Online retailing has a long reach into niche markets. This gives its products longevity that stores with finite shelf space can’t match, no matter how much steam they get from short-lived, blockbuster products. Anderson credibly explains the decline in box office sales and the rise of niche companies such as Netflix and iTunes.

            With the similar goals, Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networksargues that the digital revolution is more revolutionary than has been recognized, even by its most passionate defenders. The new information and communications technologies do not simply make the old ways of doing things more efficient, but also support fundamentally new ways of doing things. In particular, the past few years have seen the rise of social production, a radically decentralized, distributed mode of interaction that Benkler calls “commons-based peer production.” Benkler provides a wealth of anecdotes to illustrate the new economy’s revolutionary nature, but little information on magnitudes. How new? How large? How much? Cooperative, social production itself is hardly novel, as any reader of “I, Pencil” can attest. Before the Web page, there was the pamphlet; before the Internet, the telegraph; before the Yahoo directory, the phone book; before the personal computer, electric service, the refrigerator, the washing machine, the telephone, and the VCR. In short, such breathlessly touted phenomena as network effects, the rapid diffusion of technological innovation, and highly valued intangible assets are not novel. Benkler sees social production as a powerful force for individual liberty. People used to be passive recipients of news, information, norms, and culture; now they are active creators. Each participant in an open-source project, each creator of user-generated content on Wikipedia or YouTube, “has decided to take advantage of some combination of technical, organizational, and social conditions within which we have come to live, and to become an active creator in his or her world, rather than merely to accept what was already there. The belief that it is possible to make something valuable happen in the world, and the practice of actually acting on that belief, represent a qualitative improvement in the condition of individual freedom. Benkler strongly opposes privatizing the information commons by allowing owners to exercise property rights. He chides Cisco Systems, for example, for designing and deploying “smart routers” that allow broadband service providers to control the flows of packets through their systems. This action is akin to erecting toll gates on the Information.