What I wonder is this: Everybody who enters the information age slowly (and mostly without noticing) adapts to it and develops information processing skills. So why not just present a table and/or a graph? Maybe we're already capable enough to handle it.

If the data is already machine-readable, in many instances, what I want to see are a few slices through the database and a few visualizations. What I don't want is a big text blob that must first be piped through my brain to re-extract the information.