As a tool for the creation of electronic literature, poetry generators are often randomized or algorithmic authoring systems used to create generative poetry (or generative literature more generally, though the generators used to create short narrative works are usually called "narrative generators" or "story generators").
The term "biopoetry," as it refers to a genre of poetry that incorporates elements of physical, scientific, and biological elements (especially genetics) with poetic inscription and creation, was first coined by Eduardo Kac in 1999. We might consider "biopoetry" to be working in relation to the larger field of "bioart," which has been defined as an artistic practice that “adapts scientific methods and draws inspiration from the philosophical, societal, and environmental implications of recombinant genetics, molecular biology, and biotechnology" (Yetisan et. al. 724).
With his conception of critical code studies, Mark Marino aims to persuade people—"artists, practitioners, and scholars"—of the cultural significance of source code and the need for analysis and interpretation of source code as text. His 2006 essay “Critical Code Studies” in Electronic Book Review started the development of Critical Code Studies in a reflective, theoretically grounded manner, which over time has grown into a "collection on methods and discourse" (Marino).
When a work of electronic literature is described as "born-digital," this means that the work in question originated in its digital form. The term serves to differentiate born-digital projects from transmedial projects that are merely digital versions of a previously analog form. In other words, the born-digital work is one created initially in its digital form, and that requires its digital format in order to be properly read and/or used.
(Mal)Content is a term that Darren Wershler uses in his exchange on the poetry website Circulars with Brian Kim Stefans, compiled on Stefans's website in 2003 and later collected Adalaide Morriss's and Thomas Swiss's New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories in 2006. In this exchange, Wershler exclaims:
Ergodic literature is literature that relies on or requires the active engagement of a readership. Espen Aarseth writes Cybertext that the term "ergodic" comes "from the Greek words ergonand hodos, meaning, ‘work’ and ‘path’" and that:
Hypertext refers to any text on a computer or electronic device that contains references (that is, hyperlinks) to other text(s) or resources that the reader/user can immediately access. The technique has been used widely in electronic literature, most famously by way of hypertext fiction (see, for example, Michael Joyce's pioneering hypertext novel afternoon, a story.
