“One thing that evolutionary anthropologists have learned is that humans are not necessarily natural conservationists,” says biological anthropologist Carol Worthman of Emory University, who has done field work in developing countries with scant night lighting, such as New Guinea and Vietnam. “We don’t have inbuilt mechanisms to step down consumption, even in the best interest of our own physical health.” … [Physicist Jeff Tsao at Sandia National Laboratories] predicts that the future will be about sensors and network smartness. “It may seem creepy, but when the network knows where you are and where you are looking, the network should be able to figure out lots of ways of saving energy by judicious placement of light.”

• Nautilus