A straw poll of Silicon Valley professionals will reveal the hatred that Microsoft generates in elite technology circles. To this crowd, the Redmond, Washington-based company is the definition of “bastard corporate monstrosity.” But all too often these yuppie entrepreneurs focus their anger towards Bill Gates' business empire and not his company's most dastardly creation: MS PowerPoint.
In fact, all of this misguided hatred has only allowed PowerPoint to spread like a cancer into every facet of modern society, unopposed by the vast majority. Its victims at this stage are uncountable - everyone from power execs to college professors.
By its very nature, PowerPoint is the perfect Trojan horse. It's often bundled innocuously with useful programs like Word and Excel. We're lured by its ability to easily create slides with quirky effects, the extent of which is only limited by our imagination or ability to dig up hackneyed clipart.
Unfortunately, society never stepped back and asked what would happen if it opened this Pandora's box. Instead, we recklessly plunged in feet-first and have descended far beyond the point of return.
The proliferation of PowerPoint might make presentations more palatable to a generation lacking attention spans, but we pay a mighty cost for this “entertainment”: we're obstructing the flow of knowledge, dumbing-down complex concepts, and substituting good presentation skills with PowerPoint know-how.
These presentations are undermining an entire generation's ability to both interpret and present data. Perhaps not at the global business conference or UN General Assembly level, but its corrupting influence in millions of classrooms and boardrooms is ultimately far more destructive.
At my university, PowerPoint is standard fare for many professors. Instead of just talking from a lectern – as great men have done for millennia – these professors insist on creating slides of their lessons and projecting them on massive screens. While at first this organization seems desirable, it is nothing more than a forbidden fruit.
Article comments
1 - Victor Plenty
The truth of your thesis is amply shown by this.
2 - Bennett
Awwww Fuck! That's hilarious Victor, and absolutely proves the point of this post!
Rich - Nice work on this post. I had read it earlier (enjoyed and agreed) but didn't have anythink witty or deep to say about it.
Thank Victor for that!
3 - Victor Plenty
Even more hilarious, believe it or not, is the author's commentary in The Making of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.
4 - DrPat
I had an entire college thesis in the comments of a PPoint presentation once. The slides mostly had a single illustration, a title and maybe one or two words. The comments, however, were at least a page worth of text.
I gave my presentation, then passed out the comment pages as "homework"...
5 - Victor Plenty
Evil indeed, DrPat.
6 - Rich Powers
I started hating PowerPoint once I looked back and saw how much of an emphasis my schools put on using them as presentation tools. If only we spent half the time on public speaking as we did on PowerPoints�
Like I said, PPs can be a good way of projecting a map or important quote. But everything in moderation, right?
If I had a dollar for every project I've done that required a slide show, why I'd have enough money to buy a full page ad in the New York Times that says "PowerPoint Sucks!"
And Victor, thanks for the great link! Glad to see that Sun banned PowerPoint.
7 - Matthew T. Sussman
I would have liked to have seen more concrete facts supporting your cause. You don't really have any, but I see what you mean.
Cool technology can permeate a society. Look at HTML. Remember when everyone's web page used the [blink] tags?
8 - DrPat
GAHH! Don't even suggest that evil tag, Suss! You don't know who's listening...
(Could be Iesha and Lola from the B5 thread, then where'd you be?)
9 - Matthew T. Sussman
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