Will we be able to Upload? What if you could buy your way into a digital eternity with all the amenities of a swanky resort, and your living loved ones are just a phone call away? Today’s technology allows us to do things commonly thought to be fantastical or impossible two generations ago. What might be possible in another generation or two?
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backward. – Aldous Huxley
Eve and I are watching the Amazon Prime original series Upload this month. It encourages us to consider the direction and impact of technology and capitalism in today’s world and imagine what it might look like if we decode and map the human brain to the extent that we can upload a mortal consciousness. Greg Daniels creates the Amazon series Upload and stars Robbie Amell as Nathan, a hot-shot coder uploaded against his will, Andy Allo as Nora, his Horizon Angel, responsible for ensuring his afterlife is everything that it’s paid to be, and Allegra Edwards as Ingrid, Nathan’s clingy and unstable socialite girlfriend. The music is by Joseph Stephens but is not available to buy. Eve’s much more practiced ear likened Upload‘s music to be similar to Ludovico Einaudi’s. To taste his music, check out one of his most popular compositions, Experience, or Eve’s recommendation, Divenire.
While generally lighthearted, each episode of Upload is separately rated for content, and a fair number are unsuitable for family viewing. Crude language is commonplace, and there are a few scenes where nudity is used, though it is mostly suggested. Many of the characters frequently make immoral or amoral choices with no consequences. The content generally weaves back and forth over what we consider to be the TV14-TVMA line. We chose to do Upload because it raises questions and important themes to consider in a Christian worldview.
Initial Impressions
First and foremost, even though the setting of Upload is moderately novel, the plot elements have been done before…to death (Haha! See what I did there?!) Even when Ghost was done in 1990, the plot was old—a man is killed by his business partner and must seek justice from beyond the grave. If you want to go back to what might be considered the modern original version, you can look to Shakespeare’s first folio in 1623, where Macbeth was first published.
The humor in Upload was not Eve’s cup of tea, and much of it even fell outside my more crude sensibilities. Far from being intelligent humor that the series sets up in the pilot, it edges into the crude more often than not. The result is a humor that panders to the lowest common denominator. None of it is horrifically objectionable or overly tempting for either of us, but it could have been so much better.
In April 2015, in Episode 47 (and 48), Eve and I reviewed the movie Transcendence. It also involves uploading a human consciousness, but it takes it in a different direction and does a better job with it. If you still need to watch it—we recommend it.
As an engineer and an [very] amateur theologian, I enjoyed the questions the show started with, though the further into the series I get, the less they seem to be answering those questions. The Christian worldview does get a nod here and there throughout the show, and for the most part, it is respectful, but it’s almost entirely from the outside looking in.
Overall, Upload is part of a more significant trend catering to a cruder sense of propriety and humor in our society. Like HBO’s Game of Thrones or Amazon’s The Boyz, it teases vice on the screen to attract viewers. The sad part is that the post-Christian society in which we now live no longer understands the potential damage that does.
Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity. (Ephesians 4:25–27)
Upload could have been more intelligent and more accessible to people like us, but studios, despite evidence to the contrary, ignore a less vocal majority when planning their shows. Still, it raises questions worth considering, but only if the audience is mature and discerning enough. Not only are there questions of what is human, but much of the series is underpinned by economic equality vs. equity, which is worth a look.
WHAT IF…This Really Was an Option?
God is sovereign
Let me start by saying that God is utterly sovereign. While I do not believe, as an IT engineer with nearly 30 years of experience, that we will ever reach this level of technology, shows like Upload (and Peripheral) lead us to ask: What if UPLOADING to avoid death was an option? Only God knows if He will allow such a thing to happen. I hope not, but my ways are DEFINITELY not His ways.
First, we must remember that all scientists, whether they understand or acknowledge it, seek God’s will. As Tony Reinke said in God, Technology, and the Christian Life:
Until Christ returns, we wait. He is our hope. He is the great hope of all true scientists, like the magi who sought in all their designs the moment they would fall down and worship Christ.
This point is essential—no matter what field we work in or what we believe, we will all eventually fall and worship Christ. In the recording, I said, “Anyone who truly seeks knowledge, is going to eventually realize, as long as their own preconceptions don’t get in the way, that all roads lead to God.” I mean that any honest investigation will always lead to the wonder of God’s creation and His status as the Lord of All Things.
In him we have also received an inheritance, because we were predestined according to the plan of the one who works out everything in agreement with the purpose of his will, so that we who had already put our hope in Christ might bring praise to his glory. (Ephesians 1:11–12)
Life extension is forbidden for our benefit
If you look back to the Garden of Eden, there were two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed. The LORD God caused to grow out of the ground every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8–9)
God gave Adam and Eve specific instructions regarding the latter tree:
The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.” (Genesis 2:15–17)
So, while they could eat of the Tree of Life, they were forbidden from eating the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yet, they allowed themselves to be deceived by the serpent and disobeyed God. As a result, the lifespan we presume was granted as a result of eating from the Tree of Life was something that God later withdrew:
When mankind began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves. And the LORD said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men. (Genesis 6:1–4)
(Don’t start on the Nephilim question—boy, am I looking forward to better understanding that one someday!)
This is to caution us against seeking to extend our lives. God never does anything that is either opposed to His glory or not in our eternal best interests. The Word of God tells us that God specifically reduced the human lifespan.
When mankind began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves. And the LORD said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men. (Genesis 6:1–4)
We argue that a reasonable reading is that once humanity had fallen, God reduced their lifespan to protect them from an extended lifetime under the corruption of sin. While souls of the sons and daughters of God, being empowered by the Holy Spirit, may not be susceptible to that corruption, having already (but not yet) been redeemed by the blood of Christ, our sin-cursed bodies and those of the sons and daughters of man, not yet having awakened to the truth of God’s sovereignty, will still (and always) tend towards sin except for where God’s will dictates otherwise.
Humanity is fallen
A look at the post-Christian society formed in the United States over the last 60 years (or longer) shows what is likely to happen. Humanity will find more and more ways to glorify itself and to turn away from God, and in the process, it will drag all of civilization down with it.
As Christians, one of the elements of God’s mystery that we are granted to understand is that we live for HIM, not ourselves. Genesis 2:5 clarifies that God created humanity to work and care for His creation.
These are the records of the heavens and the earth, concerning their creation. At the time that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, no shrub of the field had yet grown on the land, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not made it rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground…The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. (Genesis 2:4-5, 15)
When we seek to make work easier, it should be so that we can do better work, not less. When we focus on leisure and “self-care,” we can’t help but turn to sin. Moreover, this mortal life is not the end for us, believer or not. But for believers, our final inheritance is yet to come. The Apostle Paul wrote:
For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Now if I live on in the flesh, this means fruitful work for me; and I don’t know which one I should choose. I am torn between the two. I long to depart and be with Christ—which is far better—but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. Since I am persuaded of this, I know that I will remain and continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that, because of my coming to you again, your boasting in Christ Jesus may abound. (Philippians 1:21-26)
We live this mortal life to care for God’s creation, which means, first and foremost, leading others to Christ.
Commercialization: The Dirty Underbelly Of Capitalism
Economic tyranny
Capitalism is probably the most successful form of governing economies that man has come up with, but like anything man-made, it has flaws. Upload exposes the worst of them. They highlight how it encourages companies to prioritize profit over all else. In Upload, we see that even the digital afterlife is run by a profit-first mentality. Everything is for sale and has a cost, and you are nobody if you don’t have the credit to buy. And since profit is king, competitors will cheat, steal, and kill to protect their profit margins, and the end users—in this case—the middle and lower-class uploads, get caught in the crossfire. In Upload, the chasm widens between the elite, who collect the profits, and the worker class, which does the actual work.
Not only does consumerism play a foundational role in the world-building behind Upload, but they also use it to set the show’s flavor. In the Upload world of Horizon’s Lakeview, pop-up ads are depicted everywhere, frequently at the most inopportune times. Dozens of real-life companies are named, often in unexpected team-ups that help serve the show’s humor. Oscar Meyer/Intel performs the first attempt to reinstall a consciousness into an artificially grown clone. Nathan’s funeral, which he attends, is sponsored by L’Oreal, the makeup company. The Horizon Angels (agents) are encouraged to push the BOGO Gordita deal from Nokia-Taco Bell—in ways reminiscent of a drug dealer.
As the Uploads move about their daily lives, they are prompted to approve purchases. Want more than just water to drink? That will be $7.50. We see this kind of thing in mobile and platform games—called micro-transactions—the worst offense is when a game is designed so that you cannot complete (or win) the game without spending real-world money. Since profit is king, users get reduced to the level of their willingness or ability to pay. Spend more, and you are cared for; spend less, and you are forgotten. Upload gives us corporations that have tossed aside any semblance of morality in favor of greed. Thank God in Heaven we don’t live in such a world. If you ever need to be encouraged and reminded of companies that remain Kingdom-minded, check out Christian-Owned Companies: What does it look like when a follower of Jesus runs a business? by Michael Zigarelli.
Capitalism and Democracy
Democracy and capitalism are frequently interchangeable in quotes. Regarding democracy, founding father John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The same applies to capitalism. If not exercised by “moral and religious people,” capitalism becomes a parasite on the poor. It requires moral oversight to ensure that it benefits all classes. Capitalism and democracy are the best we can do on this side of heaven. Every other system depends on an innate goodness in people that does not exist apart from God’s grace.
There is another quote about democracy that applies very well to capitalism and is frequently attributed to it. Winston Churchill is credited with saying it, but the truth is more nuanced. “Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others,” sounds pretty Churchillian and a nice line to add to an essay defending globalism, for example. But he didn’t say it, and even what he did say, in a House of Commons speech—“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried”—he attributed to somebody else, as the Churchill scholar Richard Langworth has pointed out.
It’s just code
At one point in the series, ex-coder Nathan states, “They should just give it to them. It’s just code.” This is a lovely, pie-in-the-sky sentiment that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Like television programs and music, software has an entire infrastructure behind it that must be paid for. Not only are there coders, but there are infrastructure engineers, HR, supply, management, and every other job that goes into running companies. It’s not “just code.” It’s hundreds of thousands of collective hours of work performed by thousands of people over the years, along with buildings, servers, and all the other infrastructure. That all costs money.
Moreover, with concepts like Upload, there is an issue of power consumption. Take real-world AI requirements as an example. In 2024, the AI industry’s power consumption is estimated to be eight terawatt hours (tW/h). To put that in perspective, a single terawatt is 1,000,000,000 kilowatts, which is how we measure household electrical usage. My single-family home uses between 200 and 500 kW/h a month. By 2030, AI’s power consumption is expected to be 652 tW/h. If each kW/h costs $.15, AI will consume $97.8 billion per hour – or $856.728 trillion annually, more than eight times the annual Gross World Product.
Can we meet these requirements by then? If God wills, we can. But that’s the thing we need to remember, all of this—everything we seek to do, in business as in life, is subject to God’s will:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes. Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So it is a sin to know the good and yet not do it. (James 4:13-17)
Also, we need to always keep in mind that it is not money we earn, but God we serve:
“No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Matthew 6:24)
Like everything else, capitalism is subject to the original sin’s corruption. Capitalism drives us to want ever more, and if you focus on that, you can never be content:
But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out. If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. (1 Timothy 6:6–10)
We Are Data
Upload takes the idea that people are reducible to the ones and zeros of data to the extreme, but they start with the kernel of truth in the real world and magnify it to absurd proportions. In the real world, companies take our search histories, purchases, memberships, listening choices, and many other characteristics and convert them into data points. They then use that data to make predictions and manipulate us into spending money on their services and products. In Upload, the data they have on the living deceased is absolute, and they use that data absolutely.
In Upload, Nathan’s girlfriend is paying for everything he does or consumes, and she decides to use that power to track his movements to a disturbing degree.
One of the core elements of Upload is that everyone is reduced to data points, demographics, and targets. It focuses on the dehumanization of that kind of action. We have seen it on Facebook a lot more recently. How Facebook used your personal data was big news ten years ago, but most people don’t bat an eyelash at it today.
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of data and accept the level of anonymity that comes with it, but Christians are called to a higher purpose: to be like Christ. Even in our driving, purchasing, viewing, or reading habits, we are called to be holy. In particular, how we treat our neighbors—the people we meet and interact with in IRL or in digital spaces—is called out in scripture:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4)
The Apostle Peter leaves no room for doubt:
Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (1 Peter 2:17)
The Apostle Paul reminds us that we need to be forgiving of others as well:
Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. (Ephesians 4:30–32)
The next time you are responding in anger (or with biting sarcasm) to a post on social media, remember the words of Jesus:
Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Shortly before He went willingly to the cross, Christ expanded on this by tying the “golden rule” into the entirety of the rest of the Scripture:
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they came together. And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” (Matthew 22:34–40)
We must remember that it is not our love of God that makes the difference, but his love of us!
Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 John 4:10-12)
We’ll finish our discussion of Upload next month!
Are You Just Watching? is listener supported. Special thanks to our current patrons: Isaias Santillano, Craig Hardee, Stephen Brown II, David Lefton, and Peter Chapman for their generous support. We can't continue to share critical thinking for the entertained Christian without your financial help, so please head on over to our Patreon page and become one of our supporting patrons! What did you think of Upload? We would like to know, even if just your reactions to the trailer or the topics we shared in this episode. Or what general critical-thinking and entertainment thoughts or questions do you have? Would you like to suggest a movie or TV show for us to give a Christian movie review with critical thinking?Please support the podcast!
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