The whole premise of this article seems silly to me. DataViz doesn’t need saving. It’s a timeless human skill whose value tracks more like Gold than Bitcoin. It was practiced in the 1700s by William Playfair, in the 1800s by Charles Minard, in the 1900s by John Tukey, Jacques Bertin and thousands, and in the 2000s by probably millions. I don’t know what you’re talking about “DataViz needs saving”. It’ a natural evolution for commonly used visualizations to be packaged into reusable tools like dashboard generators and libraries. What’s the problem with that? When folks really dig with DataViz, they will push the tools they have to the limits and then even invent new tools, which we see today as a common practice.

Look at conferences of current communities like OpenVisConf which going as strong as ever, or IEEE Vis, which is where many innovations of the field of DataViz have taken place over the years. IEEE Vis has been well attended for years and years, before DataViz was even a term known to the general public, and it shows no signs of slowing down or fading away.