Zoomable UI as cure for information overload?

I just experienced a comic. Well, more than one. I'm not sure how many. The last four were connected, I think. Wow.

Okay, start here: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-26/mi-26.html.
It's Scott McCloud's morning improv called "Mimi's Last Coffee". Not a very uplifting story, but it uses a cool zoomable UI made with Flash. As Scott says: The Tarquin Engine is an exciting new way to navigate comics that I think could be important in the coming years and I want to do my part to spread the word.

Then go here: http://www.e-merl.com/ex/index.htm.
It's an experience (I am not going to use the word comic again for this) by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, the maker of the Tarquin Engine, that gave me the same feeling as Ben Schneiderman's keynote speech at CHI '98. (I don't know how stable Pad++ is, feel free to experiment ;-))

With the advent of Rich Internet Applications, zoomable UI's are more likely to be easily implemented. Are we BIG IA's User Experience professionals, ready for this next step in the evolution of user interfaces?

Is it just the same as any file system where you zoom into folders, or do we need new visualizations? Or can we use current implementations of maps? Can we apply the same design patterns?

Can somebody show me these questions as a nested mindmap?