Every day, we create and process 20 quintillion bits of information, but we scarcely know what it is. Drawing on evolutionary biology and computer science, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text, and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform that has evolved right alongside us. Offering a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information, Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species.