On the surface - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 221

It has to be remembered that these surfaces can only show the shortest
distances between localities. The idea could not be used to show the spatial
divisions that long distance migration creates and destroys. What is more, to be
successfully interpreted, the surfaces must be relatively simple in form, partic-
ularly if they are to form a new undulating two-and-a-half-dimensional, but not
incomprehensible, map base.
When the geometry of a surface is not being used, a great deal of compressed
visual information is being wasted or, worse still, is misleading the viewer. There
are enough valid reasons for using surfaces, without having to use them as a
substitute for more simple and effective graphical solutions.
three spatial dimensions and reason occasionally about still higher dimensional arenas with math-
ematical and statistical ease, the world portrayed by our information displays is caught up in the
two-dimensional poverty of end-less flatlands of paper and video screen. Escaping this flatland is
the major task of envisioning information - for all the interesting worlds (imaginary, human, physi-
cal, biological) we seek to understand are inevitably and happily multivariate worlds. Not flatlands'
(Tufte, 1988, p. 62).