Immortality 2.0: a silicon valley insider looks at California's Transhumanist movement.

One afternoon in late 2007, a Yahoo executive named Salim Ismail stepped up to a podium at company headquarters to talk about what some call "the world's most dangerous idea." An intense man from India, Ismail faced a conference room packed with computer whizzes from the likes of Google, Apple, and Intel and launched into a tirade about the far frontiers of digital technology and the big battle that lay ahead.

"The current system is flawed," he said, pacing the stage. He went on to talk about routers and interrupt systems, hardly exotic material to his audience. But even within this techy sanctum, his message was a bold one. The flawed system that Ismail lamented was not a computer network, it was the human brain. "We need to design a better one," he said.

Our brains are poorly programmed, according to Ismail. Rewiring them might fix the glitches--like stupidity and violence. "We need computer chips monitoring our neural networks," he said. "Evolution isn't going to do this for us. So technology is going to have to do it."

Ismail's talk, "The Need to Reengineer the Human Brain," wasn't the most ambitious at the conference, a meeting of a local think tank called the Foresight Nanotech Institute. At another panel, a local biotechnician presented "Mind Uploading: How to Really Do It," a step-by-step proposal for transferring human consciousness onto a computer. Later, a programmer discussed "The Future of the Singularity," a time in the not-too-distant future when humans and machines will be one. These theories weren't meant as entertainment. Ismail and his ilk are working to produce extreme technologies, to reengineer the brain, upload the mind, copy people, and more. These are the technologies that lie at the heart of a movement called transhumanism.

Part science, part faith, and part philosophy, the essence of transhumanism is radical life extension and life expansion. Movement devotees perceive the human body as a work in progress. Evolution took humanity this far, the thinking goes, and only technology will take us further. Transhumanism views sickness, aging, and death as unnecessary hindrances that we have the right and the responsibility to overcome. Our bodies, frail and unpredictable, are just another problem for these engineers to solve. The brain, our body's computer, is due for an upgrade.

"Transhumanism is about using technology to enhance ourselves--enhancements like longer life-spans, better cognitive abilities, and improved happiness," James Clement, the executive director of the World Transhumanist Association, told me. "It's about transcending our limitations, including death."