William Gibson's Neuromancer introduces the idea of "constructs," beings who were formally human, but now exist as an informational recreation of their selves; a computer can hold the entire contents of the human mind, and as such carry what can be considered the essence of that person's identity.
In order to get to this idea of the construct, Gibson needed Descartes' positioning of the body as a vessel for the mind, a vessel that dies and leaves the mind to go on after it, to come before him. Descartes separates the mind and body into a form that can translate into Software and Hardware, which then Gibson's constructs can then reformulate into a mind that can live in a different body, and therefore achieve immortality [offsite].