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Companies working on human enhancement

I thought this was really interesting: a podcast on companies that see their mission as enhancing humans


This cracks me up: philosophy has just started to talk about whether this is right or wrong, and in the meantime, people are doing it anyway. These companies are:


  • Nootrobox - drugs (more or less) to make you better (or, so they say) - this fits in really well with the discussion we had about if ADD meds or depression meds count as human enhancement
  • Halo - Using a targeted electrical current to the brain to improve learning speeds
  • Soylent - replacing food with something healthier, cheaper, and more efficient (not really human enhancement, but some have caffeine and l-theanine, so there's the drug connection) 
  • Apeel - preserving produce longer (not sure how they ended up on the panel)


Summary:
Humans have always wanted to enhance themselves — from getting nutrition just-right to optimizing their performance, whether in sports or health or work. And food is a big part of all that.
But our current systems of food production (and consumption) are far from efficient and sustainable let alone optimizable. That’s where a whole new generation of wearable/ bio-feedback, food and nutrition, food production, and performance enhancement/ “nootropics” companies come in. How do these approaches move from the internet and online communities into the mainstream? Or from the university lab to the field? Or, put yet another way, from hobby to daily practice?
After all, what we measure, what we take in, and what we output defines what it means to be human. We discuss this “future of you” in this episode of the a16z podcast with Daniel Chao, CEO of Halo Neuroscience; Rob Rhinehart, CEO of Soylent; James Rogers, CEO of Apeel; and Geoffrey Woo, CEO of Nootrobox — based on a conversation with Chris Dixon at our inaugural Summit event.

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