The world of design and the design of the world?

What about sustainable design in the Web, virtual world, and game industries?

• Sustainable design issues have gone mainstream in industrial design, interior design, and architecture. There's been some movement (unfortunately mixed with "greenwash" piety) in graphic design. When will a sustainability plan for a website become important? Is it really better to send email than a letter? Finally, why hasn't the web/game industry noticed sustainability?

• Answer:

  To give my default answers, IMHO I don't think the industry has thought of this at all. It is likely that making a webpage is frequently worse than using print or another media. Virtual meetings may be more wasteful than real ones. The system hasn't been looked at. We also see literally hundreds of "green" web hosts - what does that mean? I doubt there's any rationale. Hardware in the gaming easily qualifies as "Hummer computers" - when will it become an issue? Avatars in virtual worlds use more energy than a "second world" family in the real one. Does a life of pixel-pushing absolve you of anything other than using tropical leaves as the background for your web page? Doubtful.