Generative Internet

generativity - the "capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers"

URL = http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/119/may06/zittrain.pdf

Description

1.

Concept by Jonathan Zittrain at http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/119/may06/zittrain.pdf

"The idea is that an interconnected network of multipurpose devices (computers) that can be programmed over and over (by downloading software) to execute tasks they were not originally programmed for is a typical generative grid, very conducive to innovation and creativity, to allow whoever to create and share content, etc..." (http://giussani.typepad.com/loip/2006/12/zittrains_gener.html)

2.

Explanation by Doc Searls:

"in The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It (Yale University Press, 2008) Jonathan Zittrain introduces readers to one of the Internet's virtues: support for generativity by its inhabitants. Jonathan defines generativity as "a system's capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences."[1] Opposing this, he says, is a counterrevolution that "would push mainstream users … to an applianced network that incorporates some of the most powerful features of today's Internet while greatly limiting its innovative capacity — and, for better or worse, heightening its regulability." (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/saving-net-iii-understanding-its-frames)