Generative systems
Generative systems are technologies with the overall capacity to produce unprompted change driven by large, varied, and uncoordinated audiences.[1] When generative systems provide a common platform, changes may occur at varying layers (physical, network, application, content) and provide a means through which different firms and individuals may cooperate indirectly and contribute to innovation.[2]
Depending on the rules, the patterns can be extremely varied and unpredictable. One of the better-known examples is Conway's Game of Life, a cellular automaton. Other examples include Boids and Wikipedia.[3] More examples can be found in generative music, generative art, in video games such as Spore, and more recently generative generosity and platforms like generos.io.
Theory
[edit]Jonathan Zittrain
[edit]In 2006, Jonathan Zittrain published The Generative Internet in Volume 119 of the Harvard Law Review.[1] In this paper, Zittrain describes a technology's degree of generativity as being the function of four characteristics:
- Capacity for leverage – the extent to which an object enables something to be accomplished that would not have otherwise be possible or worthwhile.
- Adaptability – how widely a technology can be used without it needing to be modified.
- Ease of mastery – how much effort and skill is required for people to take advantage of the technology's leverage.
- Accessibility – how easily people are able to start using a technology.
See also
[edit]- Digital morphogenesis – Generative art in which complex shape development, or morphogenesis, enabled by computation
- Emergent behavior – Unpredictable phenomenon in complex systems
- Generative adversarial network – Deep learning method
- Generative art – Art created by a set of rules, often using computers
- Generative artificial intelligence – AI system capable of generating content in response to prompts
- Generative design – Iterative design process
- Generative grammar – Research tradition in linguistics
- Generative music – Music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system
- Generative pre-trained transformer – Type of large language model
- Generative science – Study of how complex behaviour can be generated by deterministic and finite rules and parameters
- Generativity – Term originating in psychology to describe a concern for the next generation
References
[edit]- ^ a b Zittrain, Jonathan (May 2006). "The Generative Internet". Harvard Law Review. 119 (7): 1974–2040. JSTOR 4093608.
- ^ Robin Teigland; Dominic Power (25 March 2013). The Immersive Internet: Reflections on the Entangling of the Virtual with Society, Politics and the Economy. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 205. ISBN 978-1-137-28302-3.
- ^ Zittrain, Jonathan (Jonathan L.), 1969- (2008). The future of the Internet and how to stop it. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-14473-4. OCLC 289029003.
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External links
[edit]- A talk on generative systems by Will Wright and Brian Eno for the Long Now Foundation[usurped]
- The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it; Yale University Press (2008)
- Early generative computer graphics by Herber W. Franke
- Generative Systeme by Benedikt Groß and Julia Laub
- Bugworld - a generative vermin installation by Philipp Sackl, Markus Jaritz & Thomas Gläser
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