Thanks for posting this! I somehow missed Todd’s original post the other week. In my opinion, this is basically THE question that needs to be explored as infovis starts to mature. I agree with Todd’s points, and with your responses, but I think these are subtle issues that should be carefully unpacked.

Not to plug, but I recently completed a Master’s thesis that tries to get at some of these issues, ostensibly from a media studies perspective. I’d love to get your (or anyone else’s) thoughts on it, if you’re interested. Link is blogged here:

http://visualmethods.blogspot......eople.html

Cheers,

-Mike