Recently I've been thinking this kind of thing is more likely to be a gradual process, and not likely to take the literal form that's been discussed.
But as we use systems that expand our awareness, are adaptive to us as individuals, and interface with us more tightly, we'll slowly become a sort hybrid consciousness. And over time, we'll become more and more "online", until some day, the machine portion of that consciousness will persist in a meaningful way after the biological part has come to an end.
In other words, we might well come to a point where we "upload" by shaping the systems we interact with over time. But it won't be the same as the bio version of our consciousness, it will be something else.
Whether we will come to a point where that distinction doesn't matter to our consciousnesses or not is an open topic.
I'd guess what one could try realistically with the current technologies is linking two mice [via Ed Boyden like devices] and observing, if that could produce an effect of extended awareness between these mice [like pain stimuli, etc].
But as we use systems that expand our awareness, are adaptive to us as individuals, and interface with us more tightly, we'll slowly become a sort hybrid consciousness. And over time, we'll become more and more "online", until some day, the machine portion of that consciousness will persist in a meaningful way after the biological part has come to an end.
In other words, we might well come to a point where we "upload" by shaping the systems we interact with over time. But it won't be the same as the bio version of our consciousness, it will be something else.
Whether we will come to a point where that distinction doesn't matter to our consciousnesses or not is an open topic.