We’ve all been appalled at the notion of U.S. and local governments using drones – unpiloted flying aircraft – to take pictures or fire rockets or… Haven’t we?
Even the USDA is considering (or are they doing it already?) flying drones over farmers’ fields to monitor compliance with the hundreds of federal regulations governing farms and ranches.
Comes now the WSJ in a small story published a couple of days ago about getting people to drive less. The headline on the print edition was “The Road Not Taken May Be A Key to Driving Less” by Yuliya Chernova, who is billed as a special writer in New York for Dow Jones VentureWire.
Companies hope to use behavioral-modification techniques gleaned from psychology to influence how people use energy. Conservation start-ups such as Tendril Inc. and People Power Co. have hired behavioral scientists to help them figure out how to motivate people to better manage their daily electricity usage.
We already knew about some of these techniques – congestion-pricing for example on highways and for electricity usage. Somehow it seems more ominous when put in the stark terms used above.
Another article notes that auto insurers are doing the same thing – monitoring your driving habits. Oh, goody. Watch this. As usual with this kind of nonsense, the trend is being fostered by the enviros, who like all “liberals” believe that less (driving) is more.
