You do not need to be a data freak to know that data visualization is incredibly popular in this moment.  As humans we like to upscale, and it seems that data is no outlier. Something like 1.2 trillion gigabytes of information will be created in 2010 alone.  And as we create more data, it becomes more difficult to understand — hence visualization.

 ”Data is the new oil,” a jingle originally coined by Michael Palmer  both disturbs and awakens me to these processes. He says:

 ”Data is just like crude. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.”

Drum roll please…. enter data visualization.  Don’t get me wrong, beautiful maps are incredibly sexy.   In this vain and as one prone to become easily romanced by the aesthetically appealing, I have to ask: What does it mean for data to become beautiful? And, what is it exactly that we are ‘seeing’?