Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated? Behold, I teach you the overman: He is t… - Steven Kotler

Encrypted digital watermarking,” explains Balthazar. “Information gets hidden in information, like a code inside the pixels. Only visible with the right kind of key. It’s called steganography. Here,” pointing at the cylinder, “they’re using a similar technique, but done at the nano-level, with DNA as the information carrier. GFP is green fluorescent protein, in this case jellyfish genes woven into the atoms of the metal. The heat from your hand is the key.

Theodore Berger, for example, a neural engineer at the University of Southern California, is working on an artificial hippocampus, one of the core neuronal structures implicated in this process. Berger’s device records the electrical activity that arises whenever we encode short-term memories — for example, learning to play scales — then translates them into digital signals.

When deeply religious subjects view sacred iconography or reflect on their notion of God, brain scans reveal hyperactivity in the caudate nucleus, a part of the pleasure system that correlates with feelings of joy, love, and serenity. But Lindstrom and Calvert found that this same brain region lights up when subjects view images associated with strong brands like Ferrari or Apple.