{"id":243109,"date":"2010-01-28T13:10:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T18:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.34429"},"modified":"2010-01-28T12:39:23","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T17:39:23","slug":"the-case-against-powerpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/243109","title":{"rendered":"The Case Against PowerPoint"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m thinking we may soon turn a corner in the long battle against a pernicious affliction. No, I’m not talking about terrorism or unemployment or H1N1. I’m talking about PowerPoint. Microsoft estimated a few years ago, according to Hilari Weinstein, that 30 million PowerPoint presentations<\/a> are inflicted on unsuspecting and largely undeserving Americans every day. One might be forgiven for assuming this means, more precisely, every business<\/em> day, until one visits enough houses of worship to see that a great many men and women of the cloth have gotten into the PowerPoint act as well. Which is ironic, since I’m fairly certain that orientation sessions in hell also use it.<\/p>\n

The case against PowerPoint is long and familiar and frequently turns on the ineptitude of the user rather than anything inherently evil in the software itself, though famed data presentation guru Edward Tufte says the devil is indeed in the machine.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

PowerPoint is digital Valium for user and viewer alike, calming the
\nfears of nervous presenters while assuring the audience that instead of
\nawkward human interaction, a comfortable somnolence awaits. And if
\nMicrosoft’s estimates are valid, we are indeed overmedicated.<\/p>\n

The reason I think we may turn a corner, however, is that
\nPowerPoint has become high art. You can no longer roll up into that
\nmeeting with white text on a royal blue screen and a sprinkling of
\nbizarre stick figure people engaged in seeming acts of commerce, and
\nexpect anyone to remember anything about your presentation except that
\nit was godawful. Think you’re clever because you figured out how to
\nembed a Youtube clip? Think again. The real pros have tons of embedded
\nitems, and can pick and choose among them with the brush of a finger to
\nmake their points in interactive fashion with their audience.<\/p>\n

PowerPoint is high stakes now, and if you don’t bring your A-game to
\nthat symposium or business seminar you are likely to get snickered
\nright off the thin-carpeted dais. And heaven help you if you have to
\nfollow someone who spun his presentation from the golden stuff of
\nApple’s Keynote software.<\/p>\n

It’s a conundrum, and more executives I know are going old school
\nrather than compete. They’re rolling up the white screens and turning
\nup the lights and talking directly to people with just plain words. Too
\nembarrassed to use their weak-sister slides, they’ve made it a point of
\npride not to use slides at all. It’s like the teenager who gets a Buick
\nSkylark from Dad and decides instead to be one of those quasi-cool
\nscooter kids. Slides? We don’t need no stinking slides.<\/p>\n

I know some executives, on the other hand, who are doubling down in
\nthe PowerPoint wars. They’ve revamped their internal corporate creative
\nteams, or even hired full-time assistants whose job consists entirely
\nof constructing artful multi-media presentations. The game has changed,
\nand unless you control a lot of resources or happen to be
\ntwenty-something and in possession of a Mac, you’re better off
\nincorporating magic tricks into your monologue than trot out a bunch of
\ntired slides that are the business equivalent of a bad toupee.<\/p>\n

As in so many things, in other words, if you’re neither powerful nor
\nyoung and clever, you’d best be in possession of a whole lot of cool.
\nWhich is bad news for your average corporate presenter, if I’m any
\njudge of horse flesh. But good news for the rest of us, because with
\ntheir crutches gone, maybe fewer people will have the courage to call
\nlong meetings. And that, my fellow PowerPoint victims, almost certainly
\nhas to be good for America.<\/p>\n



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I’m thinking we may soon turn a corner in the long battle against a pernicious affliction. No, I’m not talking about terrorism or unemployment or H1N1. I’m talking about PowerPoint. Microsoft estimated a few years ago, according to Hilari Weinstein, that 30 million PowerPoint presentations are inflicted on unsuspecting and largely undeserving Americans every day. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4834,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}