In chapter one of The Functional Art (titled "Why Visualize: From Information to Wisdom"), Albert Cairo goes into the hierarchies of communication from beginning to end. The basic well-known format for this is as follows:
DIKW = Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom
Where, data is the raw pool of representational facts that are collected from the environment or a resource/study without any expressive presentation or relation to the viewer. It is simply the collection of findings gleaned from a source that is not dictating how the facts should be arranged.
The information stage is where this data is arranged into understandable ways that have a more familiar relationship with the audience and can help impart some kind of insight into the material.
This leads to the next step, knowledge. When the reader/audience grasps this information, they apprehend the facts and ascertain what is going on, the relationships and patterns involved, based upon the way that the data has been structured in the second step.
But this is not enough in and of itself. Hopefully the material, if arranged well, will impart a deep enough level of understanding or applicable insight to the mind of the person on the receiving end that it is absorbed in the sense that it begins to change how they relate to the world or act accordingly. This is not a mere ascertaining of facts, but a deeper comprehension of information.
Infographics are meant to serve this last final end result through all of the aforementioned steps. It does this via visual arrangements and hierarchies established in the medium.
Lastly, Cairo makes the intriguing point that infographics, as a tool of information sharing and display, are a type of technology. There are all kinds of technology, but they all basically share a couple of things in common: they are extensions of ourselves (beyond our physical bodies), and they are means to ends. There are also nested hierarchies of general technology, to types of technology, to different tools that are subdivisions of the various types.
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