What is an ExLiterature Type?

From what I saw at the ExLiterature Conference, an “exliterature type” is, well, a few examples:

* Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, instigator of the WELL, mover of the Long Now Foundation and the Library of Congress Digital Libraries initiative.

* Howard Besser, preservationist of digital culture.

* Jamie Boyle, one of the initiators of Creative Commons.

* Alan Liu, founder of the Voice of the Shuttle.

* Matthew Kirschenbaum, proposing new bibliographic language for electronic literature.

* Liam Quinn, XML guru of the W3C consortium, encouraging greater ties between creators of digital culture and the standards-making-organization of note.

* Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, editors of the New Media Reader — the first collected volume of keynote essays and articles on the history of New Media.

* Many writers working in the electronic medium concerned with the long term preservation of their work.

* Artists exploring the temporality of the Internet as a medium.

* Intelligent proposals on how to increase the durability, study-ability, and create-ability of new media writing.

Someone asked me, so I have to say that an “exliterature type” is someone concerned with the viability, preservation, and stamina of the “new media” culture of the past, present, and future. An “exliterature type” thinks beyond the commercial concerns of his or her own company, thinks “just what is the purpose of this art if not to be available for others two twenty two hundred years from now?” An exliterature type hopes for the free and open creation, dissemination, discussion and study of electronic literature by people unknown, well after we enarrative types are dead and gone.