Data is the new oil? No: Data is the new soil.

Visualizing information is a form of knowledge compression.

If you want to visualize something in its fullness you have to look at every perspective and every angle, and that means - sometimes uncomfortably - looking at things you don't want to look at.

Sometimes the data has a sense of a structure within it, especially if I'm looking at networks or relationships, which generally lend themselves to a certain style.

We've seen it in the last U.S. presidential campaign 2016: both sides were trading graphs and circulating data visualizations to make their point. So the political establishment is waking up to the power of a good graph as well.

Data is the new soil, because for me, it feels like a fertile, creative medium. Over the years, online, we've laid down a huge amount of information and data, and we irrigate it with networks and connectivity, and it's been worked and tilled by unpaid workers and governments.

There's a tendency in graphics to allow the trimming of certain parts. But I think that if you're open about your process, your methodology, such as introducing thresholds, introducing filters, techniques people use in research and data management, it's legitimate. It's legitimate to say, "We're only going to show data above this level, or between levels."