Microsoft takes the roof off its datacentres, Liam introduces us to metrics of datacentre efficiency and Alan wonders if our tax system is encouraging the wrong behaviour.

"Help us stop progress" This is the rather arresting headline of an advert from the Multiple Sclerosis Society seeking our support to stop the progress of MS. Why is it such a powerful headline? Why is our first reaction to anything that appears to be anti progress or anti growth negative? Progress has become a synonym for advancement. The word has lost any sense of direction. What we need are measures of progress towards something, something that is positive, beneficial, genuine progress. Not unsurprisingly a quick Google reveals there is such a thing as a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and it has a significant body of research behind it.

The GPI takes account of welfare and sustainability and provides a monetary measure so that comparisons with GDP can be made. The paper argues that whilist USA GDP rose steadily between 1950 and the 1999, the GPI rose to the mid 1970s and has been falling since then.

I saw the advert in the same week as Valued Added Tax was cut and these two events led me to consider: Why do we tax value add? Surely if we want to encourage wise husbandry of our scarce resources we should tax non value add. We should tax on the basis of the amount of value we realise from the goods. This also switches the definition of value from a supplier centric one to a consumer centric one. Use all of a manufactured good and use all of its features and we are making good use of our resources so our "value unrealised tax" is zero. Buy a big server and only use 10% of it and you pay a value unrealised tax on 90% of the server.

Warming to this rather bizarre theme, what if:

• Data Centres were taxed on energy efficiency - see Liam Newcombe's report on data centre energy metrics. Interestingly Microsoft's vision for what it calls Generation 4 Modular Data Center includes a design goal of a PUE of 1.125.
• Disc arrays were taxed on the % of data read from or written to the array?
• Productivity s/w was taxed on the % of features used?
• ISPs were taxed on the % of rated maximum speed their customers achieved?
• Electricity for lighting and heating was taxed on the % time there was someone benefitting from the light or heat?

What innovations, what changes in behaviour would such thinking encourage?