"How We Became Posthuman" by N. Katherine Hayles - really interesting book that traces the trajectory of how (among other trhings) information came to be considered (im)material essence of consciousness, a "thing" that exists independent of our embodied experience - she succinctly (and briefly) covers ground from turing to norbert weiner to the macy conferences , systems theory, Hans Moravec and so on. The book was published in 1999 I think and makes frequent reference to Francisco Varela's book "The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience", which I think touches on a lot of the subjects discussed in this thread (ie, creating a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology) - I think both these books are very well written and may provide valuable context to those who are interested:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo376...