Just came across this fabulous article by Marcus Woo … Seeing Data.
Big data, by definition, implies drinking in vast quantities of information that must necessarily be distilled down into a mixture which we humans can tractably consume and digest. There’s no point otherwise. Obviously we need more/better visualization tools to enable the process of digestion.
Seeing data is one obvious way. Between a quarter and a third of my neocortex is devoted to vision … far more than any other sense. I can consume far more data with my eyes than with my ears, or my nose, or my fingers.
The field of data visualization is keeping step with the processing innovations behind the big data/data science revolution. Angel List has a bunch — and for each of those, there’s probably a dozen more in one phase or another.
Seeing Data
Full immersion VR has to be the next phase beyond visualization … holodeck anyone?
