(SOTU 2004 PowerPoint, Bush Doctrine PowerPoint)

I had come across few times before on pieces describing the potential of PowerPoint to dumb-down people’s way of thinking. The same is suggested in the following CNN article Does PowerPoint make us stupid?. That technology affects social structures and…

She discusses the negative impacts on thought of excessive and incompetent PowerPoint use (I used her article as a club with which to beat on Bush’s State of the Union address).

?Cu?ntos de vosotros hab?is tenido que realizar una presentaci?n con la simp?tica herramienta de Microsoft? Seguro que muchos. Doy por supuesto que un nada despreciable sector de mi audiencia habr? pasado por el trance de comprimir su conocimiento sobr…

No offense to Tufte, but he’s overly enamored with dense graphical presnetations. He’s just blaming the medium instead the user. The user is the one who’s making the decision what to display. And resolution has nothing to do with it. Anything you can display on a 8-1/2×11 sheet of paper can be put into a Powerpoint slide. Resolution is not the issue.

But speaking of resolution, have you seen the types of charts that Tufte extols? They are incredibly dense. Sure, they might be an elegant way to present large sums of data in a single chart, but they OBFUSCATE. “What was the POINT?” And that’s what at issue.

The NASA scientists put together a confusing table of information. Instead they should have said:

DON’T LAUNCH THE SHUTTLE

- O-rings get brittle at low temperatures
- Damaged o-rings could cause a major catastrophe
- It’s supposed to be cold tomorrow

If you view Tufte’s version, it’s not much better at conveying the important point: STOP THE LAUNCH.

POWERPOINT HATERS UNITE!….Microsoft just can’t catch a break. Via The Talent Show, apparently PowerPoint is now being blamed for the space shuttle crash:NASA, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via PowerPoint, …

http://www.ostrichink.com/dec2003/powerpoint.html

An interesting sidenote is that Tufte was brought in after the Challenger disaster in order to help explain what happened visually. He’s also a Times consultant, which is why their graphics are spare and easy to read. He’s made millions from hammering home the same points over and over.

Your blog entry on powerpoint slides was very incisive and a fresh perspective on one more dumb aspect of the corporate world we live in.

Everything really has become a sales pitch and that seems to be about all that regular people will make time to listen to or think about.

Excellent post! I enjoy your blog a lot. I happen to be a big Dean fan as well and do a lot of work for him in the San Gabriel Valley here in So Cal.

Patrick Briggs in Pasadena