Not at all. The point is that the basis of life is the information that composes it. If that information can be reconstructed, then life can be reanimated, but it still requires a physical matrix on which to do so. The author certainly isn't assuming a soul.
I see. You've held this "information" in your hand, have you? And did you then hand it off to someone else?
Information by definition is non-material. Even Pinker and the modular cognitive scientists who put such great stock in algorithmic brain structures admit as much. It is a basic error to confuse information with its material carrier.
In GEB, Hofstadter talks about enzymes which "create new information by blindly (emphasis mine) shunting symbols in [DNA] strands. An enzyme, like a rule of inference in a formal system, blindly (emphasis mine) shunts symbols in strands without regard to any meaning which may lurk in those symbols. So there is a curious mixture of levels here. On the one hand, strands are acted upon, and therefore play the role of data; on the other hand, they also dictate the actions which are to be performed on the data, and therefore play the role of programs." (Gödel, Escher, Bach p 513) This curious self-reference, part of Hofstadter's theory of strange loops in both molecular biology and consciousness, constitutes a deep mystery.
Chaos theory, as it probes nature's norm --- nonlinearities --- is chipping away at the processes Hofstadter called strange "blind" loops, and finding Mandelbrot's order underneath.
I repeat my original claim. The boundary between material, linearly reducible phenomena and the non-materiality on the other side chaotic noise is blurring. The fun has just begun.