Data Visualization Revisited

More than 25 years ago we developed a data visualization system called Vibe. During this same period we developed a system for collaborative authoring – CASCADE – that made heavy use of visualization. These were but a few of many efforts at that time to develop new methods for understanding data, stimulated by improved hardware - faster CPUs, more memory and high resolution graphical displays that made it possible to perform advanced visualization on ordinary PCs. In this paper we revisit some of these efforts and then discuss where visualization is today. We briefly examine big data and scientific visualization where many of the issues we explored 25 years ago are being revisited. Our focus however is on general visualization. What we find is that advanced visualization systems for data presentations have not come into general use. We explore some of the reasons this may be the case.