ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the contemporary screen-based cultures of production and consumption, and some of the social and ecological implications of these new and emerging practices. It examines the environmental burden of this ecology of mediating equipment, the hardware which allows us to use the software to generate and consume our virtual content. The chapter explores some of the social and environmental implications of the digital screen as the dominant medium of the immersive high-tech world. The fantastical creations of Hadid and her peers, with their primary focus on surface and form, often have scant regard for considerations of sustainability, in which case we might argue they are best left unbuilt in terms of the current discussion. The overtly iconic buildings designed by contemporary so-called architects such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid are unprecedented in the history of architecture. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has since 1964 provided an inventory of the global conservation status of biological species.
