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The Amazon original series Upload is not really exceptional in any way - it has a great cast, an okay script, and a somewhat unique premise. Where it really blows the other series out of the water is how close its plot is to reality.
Upload centers around technology that enables the consciousness of a person to be saved onto a digital platform right before they expire.
Upload Series: The Metaverse
The Metaverse is Mark Zuckerberg's wet dream of an internet that is accessed through AR-VR (Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality) probably changing how we connect online forever.
In the image below you can actually see the beautiful Andy Allo talking to Robbie Amell's Nathan Brown. The image on right shows Zuckerberg trying out the VR-powered metaverse in a way startlingly similar to what we see in Upload.
One aspect of the Metaverse that is already available to users would be digital assistants. In the series Upload, the digital assistant is played by Owen Daniels of Space Force fame. He is seen literally donning many hats to ensure the needs of consciousness' in the digital platform are addressed seamlessly.
We already have Google Assistant, Siri to help us out in the real world, so giving it 3D virtual form would not be much of a challenge.
Neuralink - The Next Link in the Chain
Headed by Elon Musk, Neuralink is a company that's currently making a neural implant with potentially unlimited possibilities. Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) was known to consumers through drones that could be controlled by brainwaves, but Neuralink really blurs the line between science fiction and fact.
Anyone who's watched the movie Ender's Game (2013) would already have a fair idea of how a neural implant would look. It's interesting to see how close the fit and form of the device in the movie are to the actual neural implant developed by Neuralink.
The first two images below are from Ender's Game and the next two images are of the actual implant and the depiction of the implantation.
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Neural Networks and AI
To store a human's personality you will need Neural Networks and AI adjacent tech to mimic the complex neural patterns of a person's brain and store it. So far we have the Robot Sophia who has a humanoid appearance and can pick up and mimic social interactions and even strike up an interesting conversation with someone.
We are nowhere close to developing sentient AI, but significant strides are being made every day by industry leaders. Once we have this down pat, science fiction will take a definitive backseat to fact.
Joining the Dots
The Metaverse will enable us to interact with people, whether real or only in essence as in the Upload series. We already have the Brain-Machine Interface to transfer memories and raw data just like in the movie, the Matrix.
What we lack is mimicking the way the human brain works through advanced AI and neural nets that can wrangle up and store the personality of people.
