We're celebrating the 50th episode of Involution's podcast The Digital Life with a re-designed and re-imagined Web site — featuring complete transcripts of all the new episodes and back catalog and previous contributor search. The new Digital Life is live — ready to inform, entertain, and engage the digital design community worldwide.

The Digital Life online radio program — which made its debut in 2010 — explores important and pertinent topics in the world of digital design and technology. Co-hosted by Jon Follett, Principal of Involution Studios, and Erik Dahl, Involution’s Director of Design Strategy, the Digital Life explores a wide range of thought-provoking topics, from design for developing markets to the boundaries of digital privacy to the future of design education. The Digital Life began as the brainchild of Involution co-founder, Dirk Knemeyer, who, in 2010, saw a need for an online radio show covering the digital design world. In the current instantiation of the show, Dirk continues to bring his sharp and insightful commentary to the podcast, with The Human Factor segment, that focuses on the human element in digital design.

Under a provision in Governor Deval Patrick’s fiscal 2014 plan for the state, a "modern products" Massachusetts sales tax of 4.5% will be levied on the design and engineering services that create the digital world. Massachusetts is filled with software development companies — with verticals from mobile to healthcare to enterprise. It's a key innovation sector that drives the growth of our state economy and keeps our employment — which has consistently been better than that of the nation as a whole — at a healthy rate.

So, what will the consequences of this new tax be? For every $1 million in revenue, under the Governor's proposal, a software shop will pay an additional $45,000 — on top of the payroll, property, real estate, business and any other taxes it already pays. Consider this: For every $2 million in revenue, that's $90,000 in taxes, which could cover the salary of an entry-level software engineer including benefits. The 2011 Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, indicates that software and computer services accounted for $31 billion of Massachusetts economic output. If, for the sake of argument, we consider just half of the economic output as taxable software design and development services, that would result in about $695 million in tax revenue, or roughly the equivalent of 7,750 entry-level software engineering jobs. Will this new proposed tax eliminate the creation of 7,750 high-quality jobs in Massachusetts? I'm not eager to find out. Now, to be fair, the Governor's budget estimates show a figure of just a quarter billion dollars in revenue to be realized from this tax, but the true consequences, like the law itself, remain unclear. The law is vague enough that the sales tax could cover all kinds of software, from mobile apps to even Web sites.