Tufte is wrong. Period. There are two goals of visual display interface:
- To present all the information.
- To acheive maximum information consumption.
The first is limited on one end by MAX density (the most words / pixels possible) BUT on the other end by amount of display available.
1-1000 paper pages describes all the printed letters and books to 99.9999% of the universe.
With that limit in place, density at least might be a forced good - the author / publisher can’t afford more atomic costly pages, and he can’t achieve greater word economy - then and only then do you study Tuftes method from cramming in an organized fashion.
But when the amount of display avialble approaches infinity - he’s just being snobbish and dumb.
Add-in the use of technological advances towards KNOWING and PREDICTION… and he’s not worth the display in front of our eyes.
People don’t LIKE to read. They might believe it is good, but like eating vegan food - there has to be an unobvious END beyond the immediate notion of ease and comfort. Chocolate and TV are easy. They are also both powerful.
I’m right - because in the real world, no can even hint that reading is better than TV for serving BOTH functions above. Because reading sucks and people hate it.
No one can pretend that feeding users the “exact right thing next” doesn’t blow the doors off, “here it all is - hope you’re as smart as Einstein!”
Because YES - we must provide all the info Einstein would demand - but KNOWLEDGE is meant to be easier for the next smartest guy to learn BECAUSE of Einstein. And the next and so on…
It is actually pathetic and so un-romantic for the dumb old to try and eat the smart young - the old are over, all thats left is the pattern they build into the future for adaptation.
Tufte is selling a dying breed into an exclusive club of “remember when” that admires themselves while they die.