A nice peace of view in searching for "what is software"

"A person is just hardware plus software plus existence," the character Cobb Anderson declares in Software, to another character whose father has recently died:

Potential existence is as good as actual existence. That's why death is impossible. Your software exists permanently and indestructibly as a certain possibility, a certain mathematical set of relations. Your father is now an abstract, non-physical possibility. But nevertheless he exists!

Here goes some information about the above words:
The Ware Tetralogy is a series of four science fiction novels by author Rudy Rucker: Software (1982), Wetware (1988), Freeware (1997) and Realware (2000). The first two books both received the Philip K. Dick Award for best novel. The closest to the cyberpunk genre of all his works, the tetralogy explores themes such as rapid technological change, generational differences, and recreational drug use.

For more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware_Tetralogy