At times you have to wonder why so many big US corporations do so much evil (like almost bankrupting the global economy), and while sociologists compile pointless theories related to hubris and greed, I’ve determined the real cause of the problem:
PowerPoint.
(Stick with me on this one.)
Take a guy who is a normal, sincere human being, sit him in a conference room for three hours while someone carefully reads (out loud) every word on every copy-packed slide of a 50-slide presentation, and watch the rage simmer.
Cut him loose for lunch, and the guy who was only looking forward to a quiet hour in the park — where he’d feed the pigeons and smile at the attractive joggers — now stalks out of the meeting and begins foreclosure proceedings on Ghana.
Outbreaks of violence and civil strife in developing nations can be conclusively traced to the arrival of pirated copies of PowerPoint, and frankly, I can’t think of a better explanation for Donald Trump.
And every copywriter who has received a Russian-novel-length PowerPoint presentation with upwards of a dozen bullet points on every slide—and was told by some chirpy junior coordinator that it would “make a great home page—knows exactly what I mean.
While the above would constitute absolute proof in any peer-reviewed sociology journal, I’ll add one more piece of the puzzle.
The US House of Representatives is overrun with PowerPoint presentations.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
You hit it on the head, Tom. One of the things PowerPoint causes is a dumbing down of any presentation. Everything has to come out black-and-white, bulletized and keyworded. No full sentences. No exploratory graphics. (Oh, there’s clipart. A red herring, of course; filler.)
The fellow who wrote some of the greatest books on graphical presentation of data and ideas, Edward Tufte, has long maintained that PowerPoint will bring down modern civilization. (I’m paraphrasing, but only a little bit.) And yes, he’s right…
Clearly, I’m with him on the fall of civilization thing — especially when you consider the very real tendency of corporate folks to misuse PowerPoint as a drawing/outlining tool, which it isn’t…
And on a professional level, I’ve been idly considering the use of one of the newer presentation managers (most of which are online). Some interesting goodies there.
Software like Powerpoint makes generating content easier. Add to the list DTP software, website building software, even Illustrator and Photoshop. The problem is, suddenly everyone thinks that because the tools are easier to use, the content is easier to make.
(I have a PP somewhere that illustrates with nice graphs and such how thing is clearly not the case…)
~Graham
Graham, you’re clearly onto the main point. Ease of use doesn’t make it any easier to think the tough points out, then distill the knowledge / wisdom from those points.
It’s been my experience that, for many PowerPoint presenters, all the ease-of-use has done is make it easier for the presenter to show their ignorance, laziness and lack of thought.
Not that I have any strong feelings on that, though…