Humans are becoming exponentially immersed in a new information-based reality, pouring out of supercomputers, digital instruments, and stored databases.... All that comes out of the computer is an endless stream of numbers....We have to invent ideas for how to represent the numbers as visual paradigms and then turn those ideas into algorithms and programs....Visual output is the only sensible way for scientists to couple to this numerical reality [and to communicate] the results of scientific research to our colleagues in other fields and to the public at large...The power of visualization for this purpose lies in the fact that the image is a much more universal language than the underlying mathematics in which the science is couched. Larry Smarr / Visualization of Natural Phenomena, 1993