Information is merely quantitative, it doesn't include the qualitative. It's a reduction of actual substance into N measurable parameters (out of a probably infinity potential parameters), and, since it's merely abstract and not the underlying substance, it can't possibly engender substance, qualia or experience. It's called 'information' because it's a way of being *informed* about the underlying reality. It's intimately tied in with the process of informing. It's not that which you're being informed of, it's just a messenger.
I think the view that everything is information is basically a product of the current zeitgeist as you intimated, though I think it may have more to do with technologism (being so immersed in technology that we project its characteristic outward onto all life and the universe) or scientism (which holds that everything is explainable by science, which happens to be able to deal only with information) and that than the internet, digital media, communication of information, etc., which are what I think of when I think of the 'information age.'