[chat] Re: [SLUG] MS Powerpoint is a killer

[Mary Gardiner <mary-slug@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003, Kevin Waterson wrote:
> OVER-RELIANCE ON POWERPOINT LEADS TO SIMPLISTIC THINKING
> NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has fingered the agency's 
> over-reliance on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations as one of the 
> elements leading to last February's shuttle disaster. The Board's 
> report notes that NASA engineers tasked with assessing possible wing 
> damage during the mission presented their findings in a confusing 
> PowerPoint slide so crammed with bulleted items that it was almost 
> impossible to analyze. "It is easy to understand how a senior manager 
> might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a 
> life-threatening situation," says the report. NASA's findings are 
> echoed in a pamphlet titled "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," 
> authored by information presentation theorist Edward Tufte, who says 
> the software forces users to contort data beyond reasonable 
> comprehension. Because only about 40 words fit on each slide, a viewer 
> can zip through a series of slides quickly, spending barely 8 seconds 
> on each one. And the format encourages bulleted lists -- a "faux 
> analytical" technique that sidesteps the presenter's responsibility to 
> link the information together in a cohesive argument, according to 
> Tufte, who concludes that ultimately, PowerPoint software oozes "an 
> attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch." 
> (New York Times 14 Dec 2003)

Moved to -chat, MS Powerpoint and its users not being a Free Software
topic...

My own feeling on the topic runs something like this: I've seen bad
talks with PowerPoint, mediocre talks with PowerPoint and reasonably
good talks with PowerPoint in about the same ratio as I've seen bad
talks, mediocre talks and good talks in general.

Every really excellent talk I've ever seen (and there's only been a few)
has used no props whatsoever, but they've also generally had the
advantage of a good topic and an uncritical audience, which the NASA
audience can't afford to be.

With regard to the cognitive skills that PowerPoint improves or
destroys, I'm willing to bet that verbose documents full of
management-ese (or tech-ese, or your favourite jargon here) have killed
ten times as many people as bad slides.

-Mary