Could information design be contributing to the demise of ideas?

Information design is supposed to help us get our ideas across and remove the barriers to good communication caused by poor design, but could it be contributing to the demise of ideas?

Neal Gabler in his recent article 'The Elusive Big Idea' proposes the idea that we're living in a "post-idea" world, where:

"rationality, science, evidence, logical argument and debate have lost the battle in many sectors... to superstition, faith, opinion and orthodoxy." 

He says "The real cause may be information itself" or in fact, the shear amount of it we now have access to.

I admit some unease at the way information design has become popularised by the otherwise excellent work of people like David McCandless and others, to the point where every man and his dog seems to be having a go at creative ways to visualise data. In many ways this is great and I love seeing the results, but does it make me think about them? Does it help me to understand and get an insight?

I believe information design is about more than visualisation, and yes, it's complicated to explain. After reading Gabler I wonder if perhaps we'll never achieve a 'digestable' way to explain it. Or will someone now come up with an 'information design' way to visualise information design?