Amazon Prime's em Upload /em Will Make You Think About Your Own Digital Afterlife

As we gather with family and friends in video spaces, with our virtual backgrounds and touched-up faces, our actual bodies are safely secreted away in our modern bunkers, waiting for the day we might return to the living. In this context, there is something uneasy in streaming the new Amazon Prime series Upload. Like other shows that have explored the intersections between technology and society, Upload questions what it means to be truly human--and, in particular, about the potential of some part of our selves living on in digital form. The plot follows some standard tropes, including a whodunit, a romance, and a character who does a lot of growing up after he has died. But beneath this, we are presented with set pieces that make strange the possibilities of our digital selves living rich lives after death, and that question what it means to live full lives in the meantime.