The field of electronic literature is an evolving one. Literature today not only migrates from print to electronic media; increasingly, “born digital” works are created explicitly for the networked computer. The ELO seeks to bring the literary workings of this network and the process-intensive aspects of literature into visibility.

While in Europe the term "Digital Literature" is used to refer to Electronic Literature, in the U.S. digital literature is generally seen as print-based literary work digitalized for the web and stand-alone technologies like a CD-ROM. Examples of digital literature would include a copy of Homer's Odyssey found at The Perseus Digital Library or an electronic edition of Emily Dickinson's "manuscripts" at the Dickinson Electronic Archives. Put simply, Electronic Literature is considered a "born digital" art form with unique approaches to thinking about and working with digital technologies for the purpose of creating literary art.

Electronic literature began in many places, at many times. In 1952, in Manchester, computing pioneer Christopher Strachey created a love letter generator (Wardrip-Fruin). In 1966, at MIT in Cambridge, Massachussetts, Joseph Weizenbaum created a simulated conversation agent, ELIZA. In 1976 Will Crowther, another Cambridge resident who worked at a technology company, created Colossal Cave Adventure, the first textual adventure game, which was then further developed by Stanford graduate student Don Woods.

The works of electronic literature that are still remembered from the 1980s have enjoyed the attention of scholars, publishers, teachers and authors who have remained in the field for a long time. Although Eastgate did not begin publishing hypertext fiction and poetry until 1990s, it is the Eastgate versions of earlier, self-published works that are still remembered. Works published by now-defunct publishers are orphaned and rarely discussed, largely because they are no longer accessible.

But beyond working with basic text animation and variations on hypertext, other artists have approached electronic writing as a way to experiment with light versions of artificial intelligence (creating programs that themselves write “original” works of literature), as experimental graphic design and typography (finding a tradition in one of the great typographical experiments of the 20th century, Stephen Mallarme’s exquisite poem “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard”), as a way to tweak the conventions of video games (which, in their more elaborate guises, such as “Red Dead Redemption,” can themselves be seen as works of literature), or as ways to play with the conventions of the web itself — “fake” websites, such as the notorious early works of the Yes Men, or significant one-off, “Blackness for Sale.”