Year Million - First Season

In the future, you and everyone around you

will exist solely in a digital universe.

You will open your eyes and live whatever fantasy you've selected

from an infinite menu of options.

You will be the hero of your own story.

Every experience will be razor-sharp and gorgeous,

like the best smart drug ever invented.

Say goodbye to all that brain chemistry

trapping you in the darkness of your mind.

No more PTSD, no more pain, no more loss.

Remember that daughter you lost in a terrible car accident?

Rewind the clock and imagine a new outcome.

You can have the equivalent of a digital lobotomy.

Not feeling well?

Just reboot yourself.

This is the future of your digital existence.

It's the deep future.

Your body, gone.

You're all computer, all the time.

Your brain is way more powerful

than even a billion supercomputers.

Jobs, food, language, water, even traditional thought,

all of humanity's building blocks, all that's done.

And you are immortal.

Squirming in your chair yet?

You should be.

This isn't science fiction.

Today's visionary thinkers say it's a strong probability

that this is what your world is going to look like.

Tonight, they'll guide you toward that spectacular future,

and we'll see how one family navigates it,

one invention at a time.

This is the story of your future.

This is the road to Year Million.

You might not know it yet, but pay attention,

because we are on a crash course to Year Million,

an epoch somewhere in the deep future

where you can't even begin to imagine

how technology will utterly and completely alter

our notion of what it means to be human.

The idea behind the Year Million

is like a time in the future

where, like, everything is different.

It's a total paradigm shift.

An idea of this future time,

otherworldly from what we understand right now.

I've shown you how artificial intelligence

is the root of all future technology.

It will elevate the human race to a dazzling level

of super-intelligence, and it will make us all immortal.

Now, we'll launch you out into the waters

of the largest paradigm shift for mankind,

where we will live completely and totally online.

After a hard day's work

a lot of people turn on the TV and they see these worlds,

these imaginary worlds coming at you like that.

But then afterwards you turn off the TV

and say, well, that was nice.

It was just a TV program.

Hundreds of years from now,

you will literally leap into a cyberworld.

You'll be able to touch and feel the emotions, the fear.

They'll be beamed right into your brain.

Where you cannot just play video games,

but all of a sudden,

you are the hero of your, of your story.

You are the captain of the ship.

And why does being the captain of your ship matter?

Allow me a moment to digress.

Perhaps one of the greatest talents

that we human beings have

is the ability to tell stories, to dream.

Ever since we invented fire and huddled around it,

it's how we left the daily grind behind,

from Shakespeare's stage to 'Leave it to Beaver.'

The media may change, but it's still a window on fantasy.

We escape our day, our families, our fears, even love.

But we need it.

And one day, we'll have a new choice,

the ultimate chance to escape.

We can digitize our brain, digitize our persona,

and upload it to the cloud,

where we forget about our physical body,

but it's really our consciousness,

our memories, who we are,

and that is resident on a computational platform

that has infinite growth potential.

We would become the gods

that we once feared and worshipped.

I mean, could my avatar just be me

but without all of the anxiety and insecurity?

Like, I think that would be great.

She could, like, lose a few pounds and all that stuff,

you know, typical lady crap.

But I mostly just want her to, like, sleep better at night

and, like, not worry

that she like offended the guy at the deli

by like ordering her coffee weird, you know?

That choice to play God,

or just someone who doesn't tick off a barista,

in some futuristic microprocessor

is hurtling toward us faster than you can imagine.

And we are already smack in the middle

of a soul-rattling, mind-bending revolution,

where the ultimate destination

will be plugging in and dropping out.

We're talking about a future where we are no longer shackled

by all of the fickle quirks of brain chemistry.

It will be an escape from reality so pure,

I can't see anyone not jumping on board

that speeding digital train.

But let me take you through it, step by digital step.

The first step is already under way.

Virtual reality is in its infancy,

but it will soon be so developed

that your sensory nervous system

will believe every touch, smell, and taste

in the simulated environments you choose to live in.

That's when you'll be able to do everything

plugged into a VR universe, from work to school to play.

That virtual universe is a new environment on Earth

called the metaverse, version 1.0.

A new and infinite reality where you, or your avatar,

can do whatever your heart desires.

Next there's the metaverse 2.0.

That's when we'll discard our bodies,

scan our brains into a computer,

and live as a digital signal in an online cloud collective.

Now don't worry, you'll probably still have your own identity.

But in metaverse 2.0, there is no escape hatch.

It's all paradise until someone's avatar gets deleted.

With a new world comes new dangers,

and we'll need to control and police the digital sphere

from a whole host of new crimes.

And here's the thing that'll really rock your world:

some futurists believe, in fact, they think the odds prove,

that we are already living in that simulation.

You heard right.

These are people with PhDs who are saying this.

Before we begin the adventure, let's step back in time

and role play the first time you plug in.

Our future family is taking

a walk in the woods together, right?

Well, they are, except their bodies are here

in their living room.

Mom and daughter are big fans of living in that digital world;

now, if they can just convince Dad.

So your designers can recreate anything.

Yet they recreate Earth?

They create all kinds of things.

Right. But...

I thought you'd like to start with something familiar.

What do you want to see, Dad?

It seems crazy to believe

we'd ever get a simulation to look this good.

But remember where we were nearly 40 years ago

when Atari first transformed the living room experience.

Well, now think about how realistic

a PlayStation VR is today.

I was in fear of my life

that these robot zombies were going to kill me!

Exactly.

So, tack on another 40 years

and imagine how much more amazing it'll look

if you want to digitally hike the Himalayas

or parachute out of a virtual airplane

into the Amazon Rain Forest.

Or... and this isn't even in the future... you could be Batman.

I played the Batman virtual reality game

where you wake up in Wayne Manor,

you go down to the bat cave,

you put on the bat suit, and it's great.

It, you feel like you're Batman.

You'll be on the top of a rooftop in Gotham,

and you look down, and I swear to God,

sometimes I would feel a breeze go by me.

Even though I was in my living room,

like the rest of my body was being tricked into thinking

I was outside at night in the rain.

I love it.

Man, that sounds cool.

But right now, it's still just a game.

You know you're pretending.

It'd be impossible to sustain for, say, a lifetime.

But that's only because VR is in the dark ages

compared to where it will go.

Today, virtual reality is a big headset,

it's bulky,

but it will eventually become an invisible technology.

We can definitely get closer

to the retina with contact lenses.

We should be able to make ourselves able to see things

we don't see.

Hallucinate visually, basically.

In the long run, we want to splice the signal

straight into our nervous system.

You know, all you have to do is trick five senses.

You don't have to do anything great.

You just have to trick your eyes, trick your ears,

trick your nose, and trick your touch,