The practice of visualization is a directed form of mental imagery and concentration which is having a broad and substantial impact in our culture. It attempts to program the mind to discover inner power and guidance. By using the mind to contact an alleged inner divinity or higher self practitioners claim they can manipulate their personal reality to secure desired goals such as revelations; financial security; health; or improved learning abilities. The potential dangers and what we are actually opening ourselves up to are revealed in this book.

formation. The basic ideas underlying knowledge visualization and information vi- alization are outlined. In a short preview of the contributions of this volume, the idea behind each approach and its contribution to the goals of the book are outlined. 2 The Basic Concepts of the Book Three basic concepts are the focus of this book: "data", "information", and "kno- edge". There have been numerous attempts to define the terms "data", "information", and "knowledge", among them, the OTEC Homepage "Data, Information, Kno- edge, and Wisdom" (Bellinger, Castro, & Mills, see http://www.syste- thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm): Data are raw. They are symbols or isolated and non-interpreted facts. Data rep- sent a fact or statement of event without any relation to other data. Data simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself.

This text reviews the evolution of the field of visualization, providing innovative examples from various disciplines, highlighting the important role that visualization plays in extracting and organizing the concepts found in complex data. Features: presents a thorough introduction to the discipline of knowledge visualization, its current state of affairs and possible future developments; examines how tables have been used for information visualization in historical textual documents; discusses the application of visualization techniques for knowledge transfer in business relationships, and for the linguistic exploration and analysis of sensory descriptions; investigates the use of visualization to understand orchestral music scores, the optical theory behind Renaissance art, and to assist in the reconstruction of an historic church; describes immersive 360 degree stereographic visualization, knowledge-embedded embodied interaction, and a novel methodology for the analysis of architectural forms.

"This is a book about what the science of perception can tell us about visualization. There is a gold mine of information about how we see to be found in more than a century of work by vision researchers. The purpose of this book is to extract from that large body of research literature those design principles that apply to displaying information effectively"--

Information visualization is not only about creating graphical displays of complex and latent information structures. It also contributes to a broader range of cognitive, social, and collaborative activities. This is the first book to examine information visualization from this perspective. This 2nd edition continues the unique and ambitious quest for setting information visualization and virtual environments in a unifying framework. It pays special attention to the advances made over the last 5 years and potentially fruitful directions to pursue. It is particularly updated to meet the need for practitioners. The book is a valuable source for researchers and graduate students.