New LangPeeve

"We have to incent new technologies to address..." the end of the sentence does not matter because we see that by "incent" you mean "encourage" and that you're verbbing "incentive" and trying to get close to "incite" without the mob-psychosis connotations.

Though, in the case of technologies and social/economic redesign that might keep the global ass whipping Mother Nature (as Kali) is soon to deliver from actually slapping us back into the early 19th Century (and earlier in many parts of the world), I would encourage you to use the word "incite." As in, "We need to incite new..... forms of life real damn fast."

Roll this around on your tongue: "Teaching should incent curiosity," or "Both faith and ethics should incent generosity," or "Sunday news programs do not incent the seriousness of thinking required of the electorate at this moment in our history."

Now, make up a few of your own with this new transitive verb and feel how they sound to you. Do any of those sentences make you WANT to get up and do whatever it is they suggest?

No. Because "incent" lands in the mouth like a tablespoon of solid lead.

"Incent" is slightly less infelicitious than "incentivize" (which just screams: oh i want to sound smarter than i am), but let me just say that both words appear in the Random House Dictionary (not any of the snootier dicts) -- which, RHD is not exactly the gatekeeper of American usage.

As with the use of "impact" for solving the affect/effect distinction, this is just a cheat and not sign of real linguistic invention. As with "impact" this use comes out of the business communities. As with "impact," this makes my teeth itch.

Just learn to use the words we have. I love that this mongrel language of ours is flexible, creative, responsive to the zeitgeist, includes the words "D'oh!" and "sussuration:" but for the love of all souls;

invent more effective and affective, smarter and prettier words.