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"We [science fiction writers] always wanted to believe in "private sector" space -- hucksters make better characters than a government does."
- Larry Niven

Meat Puppet  
  A person with a neural cut out chip; the chip allows computer software to completely control their actions.  

"Where's the meat puppet?"

"There isn't any. That's the most expensive special service of all.' She stood up. She wore her leather jeans and a loose dark shirt...

"This cost a lot," she said, extending her right hand as though it held an invisible fruit. The five blades slid out, then retracted smoothly. "Costs to go to Chiba, costs to get the surgery, costs to have them jack your nervous system up so you'll have the reflexes to go with the gear... You know how I got the money, when I was starting out? Here. Not here, but a place like it, in the Sprawl. Joke, to start with, 'cause once they plant the cut-out chip, it seems like free money. Wake up sore, sometimes, but that's it. Renting the goods, is all. You aren't in, when it's all happening. House has software for whatever a customer wants to pay for..."

Technovelgy from Neuromancer, by William Gibson.
Published by Phantasia Press in 1984
Additional resources -

Philip K. Dick had this idea thirty years earlier - see the entry for hypno-motor control from his chillingly prescient 1954 story Sales Pitch.

Probably the earliest reference to this idea is found in The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

‘Were the Scarecrow and I alone,’ said the Tin Woodman, ‘we would travel by night as well as by day; but with a meat person in our party, we must halt at night to permit him to rest.’

Also, compare to eccentric projection from The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) by James Tiptree, Jr.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Neuromancer
  More Ideas and Technology by William Gibson
  Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
  Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson

Meat Puppet-related news articles:
  - Mod My Life Site Working On Meat Puppets

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