Earlier this year, former Braintree founder Bryan Johnson publicly announced his plans to forge Kernel, a company with the sole purpose of building hardware and software to augment human intelligence. Today, Johnson is investing $100 million of his own money into the concept...and prepare for animal and human testing trials for a forthcoming device aimed at reducing cognitive deficiencies for sufferers of conditions like Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Johnson explains that individuals facing cognitive deficiencies will be the first super-humans. This is because the FDA has strict regulations around the enhancement of human brains. If the FDA does decide to relax those rules, it will have serious and profound implications around the right to purchase intelligence, and the right to self address diseases like anxiety and depression.

I was pretty fascinated when I came across Kernel a little while ago - seems like the next frontier is making headway in hybrid human-machine system that advance our cognitive and physical abilities. What if we can give the brain slightly more processing, error-correction, and healing powers? The most important thing we don't fully understand is the brain - if we can prevent that from degrading then we can greatly expand our lifespans!