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Generation (from the Greek γενεά), 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 location in history, which in turn defines peer personality.

In biology, the process by which populations of organisms pass on advantageous traits from generation to generation is known evolution.

In the Maya calendar, Carl Johan Calleman believes that the generational evolution of consciousness has steadily decreased during the universe's lifetime from the Big Bang to the present, from 1.26 billion years during the first 820 million years to just 20 days starting February 11, 2011.

Colonial-American Generations

Strauss and Howe have identified the following generations, listed here with the birth year ranges and archetypes Strauss and Howe identified for each:

References

1. The Levels (Underworlds) of Evolution of Consciousness of the Mayan Calendar System, Carl Johan Calleman

• Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, Neil Howe, William Strauss
• The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, Neil Howe, William Strauss

See also

• List of generations
• The Beat generation
• The Stolen Generation
• The Interbellum Generation (1901–1910)
• The Greatest Generation (1911–1924)
• The Baby Boomers (1945-1964)
• Generation Jones (1954–1965)
• The Baby Busters (1965–1980)
• Generation X (1965–1983)
• The MTV Generation (1975–1985)
• Generation Y (1981–ca.1999)
• The Internet Generation (1994–2005)
• Intergenerational Equity

External links

• Generation Online
• Generations and Population

• Demographics
• Physics