These are the large questions in the field of electronic literacies of interest to this conference, as I see them, though it’s impossible in one short piece, of course, to cover all that, and immodest to try. And so my focus here will be to sketch roughly for you a handful of the literacy skills I think electronic texts demand from us as readers and storytellers.
We will be challenged to:
1. read and write databases
2. read and write thought sculptures built through electronic linking
3. balance the need for experimentation with a current craving for readerly texts
4. read and write code
5. inhabit information architectures

First, though, some quick definitions. When I use the term electronic texts I mean texts not simply generated on a computer, like a word processed document, but a text that must be read on screen, one that demands the computer for its instantiation. A lot of my own early interest was in hypertexts. Electronic hypertext has been described as a system of nested, electronic footnotes, and early literary work in hypertext usually involved replacing one screen of text with another screen of text – and in this way they much more resembled print work than contemporary hypermedia works we now see in the field. Hypermedia refers to texts combining word, sound, image, animation, or other components into fully coherent and integrated work – the words in hypermedia work are, then, only part of the text. Those of you who use the World Wide Web are already familiar with hypertext/ hypermedia – clicking on words that connect you from one (sometimes hypermedia-enhanced) document to another. Others of you who are not familiar with computers may be able to find a way to begin to imagine electronic hypertext through this suggestive list written by Susan Hawthorne:

Consider the form of a Hindu Yantra. This is hypertext.
Consider the form of the Kabbalah. This is hypertext.
Consider the paintings of Aboriginal artists.
Consider an astrological natal chart.
Consider the stained glass windows of a Gothic cathedral.
Consider the images you find in Russian or Greek Orthodox icons.
Consider the algebraic architectural and religious designs of the medieval Arab world.
Consider the image of the labyrinth, the maze. All are shorthand for hypertext.
(n. pag.)
So most of us, then, already have at least some complex, translatable literacy skills we can bring to electronic works. I’d like to talk now about my own work and experiments in this area and some of the things they have taught me.