Powerless point
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
Life in an office is increasingly punctuated by endless meetings. Some are more necessary and stimulating than others. But chances are that, at some point in the meeting, technology will take over in the form of a computer generated presentation. As Chris Satullo observes in his weekly commentary, this doesn't usually contribute to a free flow of ideas.
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I was at a conference recently back when a young man got up and said something liberating.
He explained he was going to take the radical step of simply speaking to the audience, rather than subjecting them to a projected display of dancing bullet points. "Power corrupts," he said, "but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
I felt like giving him a standing ovation.
It’s been years since the Microsoft presentation program known as PowerPoint was first decried as a bane to humankind.
That has not curbed PowerPoint’s viral spread one bit.
By now, you know the drill. You show up for a lecture or a panel discussion. A speaker hands out a printout of his PowerPoint slides. Then he gives his speech, tediously reading his way through the selfsame slides, adding nothing to what you’re already holding on your lap.
"I can read, you know," you want to cry out in frustration.
Now, I’ll admit that occasionally a speaker makes wise use of the program, with slides that make visual jokes to punctuate points, rather than deadening them.
But more often than not, PowerPoint induces constipation of the mind. Its mandate is to boil the world down into bullet points; its offer is to hide weak thinking behind fancy graphics. The result: creativity gets limited, complexity ignored, narrative shortchanged.
I give lots of speeches. The hosts usually ask me at some point, "Will you need any audio-visual equipment?" When I say no, there’s a pause. They’re thinking: "Wow, is this guy a daredevil working without a net? Or is he a technophobe who’s going to bomb?"
In the interests of candor, I should admit that I’ve occasionally inflicted PowerPoints on an audience. One time, as I spoke to an audience of 500, some puzzled faces clued me into a problem. The tech crew had loaded the wrong slides, for a different speech.
He who lives by the PowerPoint, dies by the PowerPoint.
That should have cured me, but I’m sure, at some future point, I’ll commit PowerPoint again.
But I’m even more sure that America would be a wiser, funnier, clearer-thinking place if all of us who stride to a lectern made this resolve: Use this sinister program only as a last resort, not a first choice.
The point is to provide short, simple
facts and graphics
and elaborate on them for students.
Engineers and scientists can very effectively use presentation software to convey data – but also get carried away with Powerpoint. One of the very best technical talks I ever attended was given by the late Richard Smalley on nanotechnology. He used only two hand-drawn transparencies at various points in an hour-long talk to illustrate his points – one a sketch of a carbon nanotube and the other a graph of their electric properties (as I recall).
As a current student, I fully agree with this. Being in a huge lecture where the speaker is a tenth of the size of his PowerPoint slides is just another place where college kids fall asleep. When I go to a lecture that follows no particular script, it tends to be more interesting. It's college, so kids still fall asleep, but it's a much smaller percentage.
I teach physics at Burlington County College (NJ) and have a very innteractive lecture method using the overhead projector and handouts that include many diagrams and partial examples and practice problems. Our College has decided to no longer support the use of overhead projectors.
My studetns have told me they enjoy and learn much more from my method of instruction than power point. Your essay confirms what my students are telling me. Thank you.
I agree. I thin it was Edward Tufte who said that "Power corrupts, Power Point corrupts absolutely". His books decry the use of Power Point and he suggests that bad power point charts and unclear communication skills led to both Space Shuttle disasters. He really feels strongly about this.
On the other hand, out here in the corporate world, for better or worse, it is the standard tool for communication. The key is to use it to enhance the point you are trying to make while avoiding the presentation (don't just read the charts), cognitive (this pretty picture without data makes my point), and statistical mistakes (I'll just leave out that data that doesn't fit my hypothesis) to which it makes one susceptible.
I recently riffed on this topic myself after reading several of Edward Tufte's books, and being converted to Tuftian dogma. I currently trying to moderate my viewpoint slightly.
Great essay! As a former teacher who now frequently works as a daily sub, I see many students' eyes glaze over as they settle in for a teacher's Power Point presentation. Conversely, when I "lecture" a class with ample eye-to-eye contact, following no script, I often encounter increased attention. It seems Power Point causes the same problems we were originally told it would eliminate. Moral of the story: Any effective teacher must use a wide variety of teaching techniques and absolutely enliven any Power Point presentation beyond a handout and a screen.
I just heard this on the way to work. I agree its the theater of last resort…it's a horrible crutch and hinders communication in most cases.
Agree 100% with what is said. Presenters reading from the presentation are not effective, and need to rethink their presentation if they intend to read it verbatim.