This is a common feature of many geek futures, being able to "copy" yourself into a digital or other format to attain "immortality."

Of course, what you really get is you sitting there in your wheelchair looking at a copy of yourself in a computer. No immortality for you, pal. Just your personality and experience going on forever.

Now, maybe there's something to that. Experience and knowledge gained over a lifetime is something to preserve, but hell, if you really have something worth passing on, tell your kids or write a book. That's how it's been done for centuries. It seems a bit egotistical to think that you're so important to the universe that you have to inflict your personality on the future after you yourself die, even if the process was perfect. And I bet it wouldn't be.

It's small comfort to us as individuals, but I think that the "turnover" of humanity is one of the reasons we progress and change. I suspect true immortality would be a recipe for cultural stagnation. I'm cynical, and I'd bet that if there was an "immortality pill," it would tend to gravitate toward precisely those people and groups you would not want to live forever.

If you want an idea for an SF story, how about a group of people dedicated to the evolution and freedom of humanity that secretly and quietly sabotages any scientific progress toward real individual immortality? "Persons from Porlock" as it were.