This modern era is no different, of course, if anything, faith in technology has made the impossible seem possible. That faith is beginning to lend legitimacy to physical immortalists, a still-fringe but growing cast of characters who view death as a curable disease.

Anti-aging researchers at Harvard and other top medical institutions are making strides every day on new drugs and interventions from compounds such as resveratrol, found in the skin of red grapes.

Last December, Google hired Ray Kurzweil as its new engineering director, a man who aims to, in a few short years from now, “upload his brain into a computer and fly around the world as a swarm of nanobots,” according to mobile and tech news website BGR. […]