Really, really going to have to write up some stuff about Ben Fry‘s talk; but in the mean time, Peter’s been talking with another info.vis.Guru, Marti Hearst:
“Marti forecasts a significant change in how visualizations are approached. In the past, they’ve been treated as standalone applications, “Look at this thing! And how beautiful it is!” Where as the key for the future will be incorporating it as a small part in a larger system, integrating it with the rest of the interface. In doing so, this will require visualizations to seriously take the problem that users want to solve into account, a motivation currently lacking from many visualizations.
Petafloptimism 