I mean literary work that requires the digital computation performed by laptops, desktops, servers, cellphones, game consoles, interactive environment controllers, or any of the other computers that surround us.
"requires" seems the key word to me here, and not only that, but that it requires computation!
Perhaps the literary equivalent for a simple could be found in the various tools we have developed to describe poetry: meter, rhyme, stanza form, assonance, alliteration, etc. No one of these could adequately describe all poems, but taken together they can get us pretty close to describing objectively, say, some of the startling effects of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s sonnets (and might get us a little closer to the “meaning”).
It seems to me that he is arguing for a LACK of definition, saying that is might be more useful to look at characteristics of works in the canon rather than to define the genre. Because of the wide variety of works that can be considered e-lit, the term seems hard to nail down (as we've seen across these sites) but there are some requisite characteristics that can be looked for and analyzed.
This is cool to me. We think so much about the internet as being this place where everything is permanent, whether you like it or not, and yet it can present an opportunity for even more ephemeral art than the printed page. Performance literature!
created with the use of a computer for the electronic medium such that they cannot be experienced in any meaningful way without the mediation of an electronic device"
This seems to eliminate some of the forms on the previous page, which were written in CONTEXTS (emails, twitter, etc.) only available on computing devices but not necessarily only able to be experienced on those devices. I can accept either definition though I was originally thinking more closely along these lines. I wonder if one definition is more commonly accepted than another?
Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs
Right; I was thinking in the very limited terms of lit that could only be experienced through a computing device but this fits the definition of "[taking] advantage of capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer."