Quote from Richard Grefé

The need for design can only increase
Designers make the complex clear. They are the intermediaries between information and understanding. They use form and content, yet their real value is enhancing understanding through applying context and time to an audience’s grasp of the meaning of information and messages.

If these characterizations are true, think of what this means for information design and data visualization in the coming age of “Big Data.”

According to Sam Palmisano, IBM’s outgoing CEO, in a speech last September: “It is estimated that there will be 44 times as much data and content coming over the next decade…reaching 35 zettabytes in 2020. A zettabyte is a 1 followed by 21 zeros.” [Note: that would be 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes]

Computing power alone will not make this amount of information intelligible and useful.