Stole the quote from Oscar Wilde, anyway reading all the recent articles such as the one from business week
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NM9CTG1.htm which comes from IDC. Has very similar parallels with the problems that we are inheriting today concerning CO2 pollution. In a few articles people refer to early days of the industrial revolution circa mid 1800's when we started to build the large chimneys (smokestacks) which belowed out CO2 and many other even worse pollutants. Todays problems started 200-150yrs years ago. Only in the last 50yrs Governments produced standards, limits, CO2 ratings and taxes to slow this down. Lets say that two thirds of the way through the industrial revolution we started to realise the environmental impact.

Nowadays, we create, or bellow out data like it has no effect on our civilisation or environment. But as discussed earlier, storing data on the wrong media can have high environmental costs.

In 150yrs will we look back at the early days of the IT business the same way as we look back at the early days of the industrial revolution.

Will governments soon produce standards, limits, energy star ratings and taxes to stem the amount of data that we produce?

Forgive me if someone in a government think tank raises a tax per CPU watt output or GB. Lets see if they get voted in, but that is another story. This is the energy star system, just like we have the EU efficiency ratings for fridges.

Think of it this way:

IBM mainframe = First steam engines, Trevithick, the Rocket, George Stevenson. Amazing but dirty.
Amdahl and Hitachi = Better faster steam engines. Faster but still water cooled, dirty.
DEC computers = As always the American's mass produce "Great American Steam locomotives". More of them and less dirty.
UNIX servers = Now we are talking, everyong can build their own factory, remember "Open Systems". Faster, simpler, but not as dirty, not water cooled.
PC's = Model T ford, any colour you want as long as it Microsoft Windows. Dirt for everyone, going back to water cooling CPU's and GPU's, sad.
Linux = Custom cars, came in 60's and 70's was great fun and cool, but uniqueness had a maintenance cost. Cool but does not consider the dirty infrastructure it may be encouraging.
Multi-core Sun T2000 low power systems, with SunRays = Toyota Pirus (not really my SAAB Biopower). Clean and cool, just like a washing powder advert.

So we have gone full circle and are back to the future, it took "industry" 200yrs to get to environmental sensibilty. In the IT industry things move faster, lets say 4 times faster, so I think that it will take 50yrs to get where we are in comparison to the industrial revolution. To discuss the starting point for IT is another story, but similar parallels, Alan Turing in England with the Colusus or ENIAC in Manchester. Then the UK giving the technology to the US and off we go with Silicon Valley.

So by my judgement, if we are thinking about the environment in the IT business, we must be two thirds of the way through the IT revolution. As a rule of thumb (fun).

Now the actual real cool revolution going on now is the Biotech revolution, but I am too old for that.