The Edge

What If Your Data Was Valued Like Currency? At This Café, It Is.

Shiru café offers students a free coffee in exchange for personal data. The data is related to their future employment desires, their habits during work and their use of social media. The café is open in informing students that this information will be passed to employment agencies and potential employers.

Neuro Embodied Design: How We’ll Become Cyborgs and Extend Human Potential

Humans will soon have new bodies that forever blur the line between the natural and synthetic worlds, says bionics designer Hugh Herr. In an unforgettable talk, he details "NeuroEmbodied Design," a methodology for creating cyborg function that he's developing at the MIT Media Lab, and shows us a future where we've augmented our bodies in a way that will redefine human potential -- and, maybe, turn us into superheroes. "During the twilight years of this century, I believe humans will be unrecognizable in morphology and dynamics from what we are today," Herr says. "Humanity will take flight and soar."