“When you pull a technological rabbit out of a hat, it very often has very nasty droppings.”

We Are As Gods, the new documentary about the life of “counterculture legend” Stewart Brand is a pointed lesson in the temptation, allure, and – ultimately – danger of unchecked hubris.

It is also objectively difficult to classify or easily describe. Directors Jason Sussberg and David Alvarado recap Brand’s life and the surprising influence he’s had from 1960s through today. Brand was most notably the founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog: a “compendium of wonderful tools” that preached the gospel of new technology to the burgeoning hippie movement in the mid to late 60s.

Descriptors like “tech visionary” are tossed around with ease nowadays, but in Stewart Brand’s case, it seems earned. Brand was glamoured by technology at a young age and quickly saw it as the answer to many of humanity’s problems. It was our way forward as a species. In the film, he explains that “you can’t change human behavior, but if you change the tools, you can change whatever you want.”

And that’s the course he’s pursued for decades. He’s not trying to change people. Rather, he’s changing the tools so he can change the world.

His entire life has found him at the center of new movements just before they burst out of their shell and make history.

He and Ken Kesey produced 1966’s Trips Festival, which drew The Grateful Dead (even though they weren’t officially booked for the gig) and birthed Haight-Ashbury as a counterculture community.

He got interested in computing and palled around with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the mid 70s before they formed Apple. (Jobs actually waxed poetic about Brand in his 2005 Stanford commencement address.)

In 1985, he cofounded The WELL, which remains one of the oldest online communities in continuous operation. Consisting of internet forums, discussion boards, email, and web pages, it anticipated – and defined – what the internet would eventually become.

And he currently serves as president of The Long Now Foundation, which takes a step back to focus on long-term (10,000-year) thinking and solutions.

For example? Utilizing DNA resequencing to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction and repopulate the Siberian steppe.

We Are As Gods (which takes its name from Brand’s purpose for the Whole Earth Catalog: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it”) isn’t merely a biopic of a tech visionary at the forefront of several culture-defining movements. The film also dives into Brand’s efforts to bring back the mammoth – both the how and the why.

Brand isn’t your typical John Hammond at the helm of Jurassic Park. Yes, he’s concerned with the “Can we?” But he also has a response to Ian Malcolm’s inevitable “Should we?” For Brand, it’s more than an exercise in scientific possibility. It’s also a way to address climate change and the melting Siberian permafrost.

So, yeah. There’s a larger purpose. But can the woolly mammoth really save the planet – and us as a species? Genetically designing an extinct species and using it to populate the tundra isn’t going to reverse climate change all on its own. But can it have an effect?

Possibly. I guess it depends on who you ask. Biotech evangelists like Brand are hopeful. And the film makes a compelling argument for how and why it could actually work. By way of Brand’s own enthusiasm, Harvard geneticist George Church’s bleeding-edge research, and the optimism on display at places like Russia’s Pleistocene Park (and from its colorful caretakers), We Are As Gods will have you thinking in radical new directions about familiar problems.

But it’s not totally one-sided. Plenty of environmentalists and scientists (and many others) are skeptical – nay, fiercely oppositional – to ideas they see as “unnatural.” And a plan to resurrect a massive species that went extinct more than 10,000 years ago certainly fits that description.

According to directors Sussberg and Alvarado, “The idea of doing a feature film on Stewart’s remarkable life, and controversial de-extinction project, seemed so cinematic, fascinating, and urgent: we’re losing (and have lost) keystone species causing impoverished ecosystems; and humans are to blame. But, if we act as good gods, we can be part of the solution.”

And that’s the real question, isn’t it? Can humans ever be “good gods”?

We Are As Gods was one of the “casualties” of this year’s canceled SXSW festival. Details on a theatrical run or home release seem to still be in flux, but definitely keep your eyes open for this one.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.