No Heat My Rancilio Silva is not making hot water or steam. I think the heating element is gone. Can I replace this myself?

I disagree... I think its the thermostat reset switch. A little red button once you open up the machine. look towards the front of the boiler and bush the button. Same thing happened to my Rancilio Silvia.... I opened it up, hit the reset switch... and voila! Working again! Here's the YouTube Video on the details. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQdJNm9RV68

The element itself is not likely to fail for years.  All coffee-makers are provided with a thermal fuse located near the heating element and in series with the element itself.
This device is bullet-shaped with one lead connected to the case, the other insulated from it. If there was no protection of this kind, it could lead to a fire if the heating element fails to get turned off when reaching its design temperature and nearly impossible to buy as replacement parts.
These are not user replaceable and both the thermal fuse and the bimetal switch that controls the current for the heating element have become increasingly less reliable as they are made in China and since we have little alternative, we have to either keep track of our warranty or just throw it away when it fails.
The fuses can fail at any time and I have brought back three coffee-makers in a five day period, all with the same failure, before giving up and getting a refund.
Another type of failure, namely of the bimetal switch occurs over time and reveals itself by the ever-longer brew time that is unaffected by dissolving the lime in the system. The heat sensitive metal switch part becomes gradually less responsive causing the machine to just cough instead of pump as when new.  The last one I tossed had reached 40+ minutes per pot.