Visualization: It's Right Now.

What says more: a name or a logo? How do people recognize you: your avatar or your resume? What's the more precious piece of real estate: a famous URL or a lot in a famous zip code? Today, logos tell epic stories. Screen names equal human identities. Web addresses fund mansion renovations and the purchase of ranches, islands, and city blocks.

More than ever, we are swimming in information. We are pickling in data. More information than any human world has ever seen before or could ever hope to comprehend is generated every day (Figure 20-9). And so we turn to visualization as a means to collect, condense, and convey this information.