Dan Cohen reflects on data visualizations in light of IBM’s Many Eyes project:
The Many Eyes researchers point to successes such as this groundbreaking visualization of the New Testament. News flash: Jesus is a big deal in the New Testament. <snip> I have been slow to appreciate the power of textual visualization—in large part because I’ve seen far too many visualizations like this one, that merely use computational methods to reveal the obvious in fancy ways. <snip> But when I see visualizations like this one, the lesson is clear: Make sure your visualizations expose something new, hidden, non-obvious.