What is Electronic Writing?
I’ve been thinking about a definition of electronic writing, and talking it over with some folks (Talan Memmott, Robert Coover, David Durand, Elli Mylonas), and it seems to work pretty well - so I thought I’d propose it semi-publicly:
“Writing that requires computation at the time of reading.”
This excludes: novels written by computer programs, text-bearing Photoshop collages printed on paper, traditional stories distributed on web pages.
This can include work presented via: blogs and wikis, web pages and Flash animations, cellphones and PDAs, newsgroups and search engines, robotic sculptures and virtual reality chambers, email and calendar programs, chats and MOOs, video games and interactive fictions.
An important aspect of the definition is the word requires. An email narrative such as Blue Company requires computation at the time of reading because being sent and read as email is part of its material as an artwork. Emailing a friend a Poe story doesn’t turn it into electronic writing.