Generativity

Modern psychoanalysts, starting in the early 1990s, have included a concern for one's legacy, referred to as an “inner desire for immortality”, in the definition of generativity.

Example items include "I try to pass along the knowledge that I have gained through my experiences", "I have a responsibility to improve the neighborhood in which I live", and (reversed) "In general, my actions do not have a positive effect on other people."

[2] From its inception, the Internet has acted as a generative force allowing users to create and communicate in ways unimagined but foreseen by its creators who for this purpose built-in an openness and hardware and software agnosticism.

Zittrain was first to apply this term outside psychology, in cases where a generative technology leads to "unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.

He highlighted cases in which apparently innocuous producer, consumer, and government actions from a move away from PCs to one-way systems such as "smart" appliances cause a decline in generativity.

[2] As a result, he emphasised the need to be clear about treating generativity, rather than apparent means supporting this as the key valued characteristic of the system.

As a result of this focus, political advocates of end-to-end are too often myopic; many writers seem to presume current PC and OS architecture to be fixed in an "open" position.