What Does "Generative" Mean Anyway?

Today's Sunday New York Times included a column of mine in the business section which tried to think about the App Store's tremendous rate of innovation over the past two years, and the clear benefit it has had for small developers. My general point was that, while many of us have worked under the assumption that open platforms tend to be more "generative," in some important ways, the closed architecture of the App Store and the iPhone OS has actually contributed to the generativity of the...