There is a fundamental limitation to the way we have traditionally worked with complex information: we are trying to fit an increasingly large and interconnected world onto a finite rectangle.

Screens have become larger, sharper and more sophisticated. Smartboards have transformed meeting rooms and classrooms. Ultra-wide displays can present enormous amounts of information. Yet no matter how large the screen becomes, it remains a screen — with boundaries that determine how much information can be displayed at one moment.

Complex financial and corporate structures do not have such boundaries.

A holding structure can contain hundreds of companies, ownership relationships can cross several levels, financial instruments can be connected through multiple dependencies, and the relevant information can extend across annual reports, transactions, people, markets and time. Trying to understand all of this on a single screen inevitably means selecting, hiding, scrolling, zooming or switching between views.

Data2Space takes a fundamentally different approach.

With suitable smart glasses, the user is no longer looking at a larger screen. The user enters a spatial environment in which information can extend beyond the physical dimensions of any display.

There is no predefined edge of the canvas.

A corporate structure can extend around the user. Companies can be positioned in three-dimensional space, relationships can be represented as connections, and different layers of information can be explored by moving through the model. The user can approach a particular company, examine its relationships and then step back to understand its position within the larger structure.

What appears crowded and confusing on a conventional screen can become spatially organised.

This is more than a technological improvement. It changes the metaphor through which we interact with information. Instead of asking, “How much can we fit onto this screen?”, we can ask, “How can we organise this information in space so that it becomes understandable?”

Smartboards remain useful for presenting information. Screens remain essential for many forms of analysis. But they cannot compete with an environment in which the available space is no longer defined by the physical dimensions of a display.

The potential is particularly compelling for collaborative analysis. Several participants can enter the same virtual environment, even when they are physically separated. They can look at the same structures, discuss relationships and explore information together. A virtual room can therefore become substantially larger than the physical meeting room in which the participants are actually sitting.

The presenter can still use conventional 2D slides. Documents can still be displayed. Charts can still be shown. But around these familiar elements, an almost unlimited three-dimensional analytical space can emerge.

This is where Data2Space points beyond the traditional evolution of screens.

The next step is not necessarily a bigger monitor, a larger wall or a more powerful smartboard. It is the recognition that some information should not be confined to a screen at all.

No screen is large enough when the subject itself has no natural boundaries.

With Data2Space and intelligent glasses, information can become a space rather than a picture — a space that users can enter, explore and share.

The screen has an edge.

Space does not.