Martin Wattenberg On Visualizing Large Textual Data

Martin Wattenberg, one of the creators of Many Eyes, in reply to “Why is a numbers guy like you so interested in large textual data sets?”

The entire literary canon may be smaller than what comes out of particle accelerators or models of the human brain, but the meaning coded into words can’t be measured in bytes. It’s deeply compressed. Twelve words from Voltaire can hold a lifetime of experience.

Martin Wattenberg = smart guy.