The language of ‘immaterial’, ‘weightless’ and ‘virtual’ digital media inflects discussions from business models to aesthetics, cultural analysis to democratic politics. But digital media are none of these things.

The raw materials, manufacture, use and recycling of digital tools all have significant impacts on the people who work in these sectors and on the natural environment. Loss of species and habitats, energy use, pollution, labour and living conditions are all implicated in the physical infrastructure of computing, and are likely to become more so for reasons which include the rise of the countries, migration to cloud computing, virtualisation technologies and the integration of mobile and telecoms networks.

Professor Sean Cubitt visited the UWE Pervasive Media Lab on 22 Sept 2009 to discuss the issues, developments and possible solutions to the growing problems caused by the digital media infrastructur.

As promised, Sean invites you to continue the conversation through his blog. He also provides links to studies, reports and examples he mentioned in his talk: http://seancubitt.blogspot.com