Abstract
The fundamental message of this chapter is that contemporary culture hinges upon unsustainable energy use. Whether the topic is fine art or reality TV, each one is complicit with our global environmental crisis. This development also articulates to a new form of diminished worker power—the cognitariat. Together, these tendencies present artists with serious ethical, political, and economic questions. Many of them are responding to those challenges in constructive, reflective ways that can stimulate the rest of us to join the dots and appreciate just how dangerous digital culture is to our world, even as we rely so much on...