Generation

Encyclopedia : G : GE : GEN : Generation

For other uses, see (disambiguation)}}}.

Generation (From the Greek γιγνομαι), also known as procreation, is the act of producing offspring. It can also refer to the act of creating something inanimate such as electrical generation or cryptographic code generation. A generation can also be a stage or degree in a succession of natural descent as a grandfather, a father, and the father's son comprise three generations.

A generation can refer to stages of successive improvement in the development of a technology such as the internal combustion engine, or successive iterations of products with planned obsolescence, such as video game consoles or mobile phones.

A generation can also represent all the people born at about the same time, sometimes called a generational cohort in demographics. Historians hold differing opinions regarding to what extent dividing history into generations is a useful analytical tool or an improper over-generalization.

William Strauss and Neil Howe, in their book Generations, list the generations of Anglo-America. Their definition of "generation" is given as a cohort-group, in which are all persons born in a limited span of consecutive years, whose length approximates the span of a phase of life given to be approximately 22 years, and whose boundaries are fixed by peer personality. Peer personality generational persona recognized and determined by common age location, common beliefs and behavior, and perceived membership in a common generation.

In biology, the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation is known as the theory of evolution.

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Generation

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