After seeing the video on Journalism in the Age of Data, I have to wonder about how we think of things now and how data visualization has changed that. Several of the people interviewed talked about how data visualization had become almost useless due to the two-dimensional nature of magazines and newspapers and designers kept on just cramming more and more information into each successive infographic.
Now, with things like flash and the popularity of making interactive infographics, I can’t help but wonder if this new age of data as shifted our perceptions of data. One woman in the video talked about how this age of visualization has changed investigative reporting because now people can manipulate the data easier and be able to put the data into different forms to aid in seeing particular patterns. Drawing these inferences faster shortens the turnaround for reports and readers get to see the data faster and in some cases real time.
So, as I asked, as audience members have we changed our reading and viewing habits such that we expect these sort of things on a regular basis? Have we not gone too far when it comes to trying to represent data? It would seem that as helpful as infographics and the like are good and interesting, they seem to be an art that spins up and quickly spins down as newer technologies and ways to aggregate and collate data arise.