Nothing about data is a given. Data, from Latin ‘datum’, translates into a ‘thing given’ (Harper [nd], ‘data’). We need to reconsider this given-ness of data. If anything, data are given to us by something or someone. Data are given into an emergent situation. They are not fixed, pre-existing entities. This book, however, is not just about data. The vernacular use of data refers to digital or analogue datasets that are generated, collected, assembled, and used for creating facts. I employ the term information instead, because it includes data, but refers to more overarching notions of communication and knowledge and their imbrication with processes of shaping and giving form (Harper [nd], ‘information’). Giving form is a material process. Indeed, the etymology of matter, going back to the word ‘mater’ meaning ‘origin, source, mother’ (Harper [nd], ‘matter’), adds to this book's understanding of information. Not only is information given to us by someone or something (mother), but it is material. What is more, giving form and shaping indicate processes of being in-formation.

In short, the term information already summarizes this book's basic argument: Information is not a standalone. It is given to us by humans and things. It actively changes and is changed in processes of making, shaping, and giving form. Information is material and it matters.

That information matters has become increasingly graspable: information materializes as police patrols and incarceration rates, as online spaces in which theories bubble up and entire movements form. Browsing and genetic data become manifest in customer and behavioural profiles. Information shapes our bodies through self-quantification or biometric capture. It forms markets, science, space, aid, killings, art. Whether recorded, recoded, unregistered, or deleted – information co-creates our present and future. We are ‘becoming-with’ (Haraway, 2015b: 161) information. Here, two aspects are central that I develop further in the discussion on the role of information in society today: Information is not only material, but it exhibits a liveliness that co-shapes our lives. Here, collective processes of making move to the fore, which means that we, too, play a role in making information matter. If we take both points seriously, we need new tools and motivations to identify how information materializes, turns lively and matters, and where the openings for our own engagements are. What does it mean to make, and to make together?