Just becuase data is at the heart of the future of communications doesn't mean our world is going to be swamped by dull graphs and excel sheets. Having access to data is meaningless unless we can efficiently and intuitively gain insight and understanding and thanks to the rapidly growing area of Data Visualisation this dream is being realised.
The video below is a beautiful (really!) example of what can be achieved when faced with a mountain of data from Social Network connections.
I'm fairly sure that the New Age soundtrack isn't included in the system, but Skyrails (the system in the video) certainly appeals to the DataGeek in me! And as if that wasn't enough for you, check out Mashable's view on 7 beautiful data visualisations (of which Skyrails is one!)
It doesn't all have to be about sci-fi style visualisations either; Simple dashboards that show data in a fun way can help. John Willshire over at PHD has put up a great post on his love of visualisation yesterday and shows a simple example that he created in answer to an IPA module for easyJet. His IPA paper is a pretty good read too!
So break out those New Age mp3's and let's all look forward to the death of dull data tables thanks to the joy of data visualisation!
Bryan aka ThePersuader