PowerPoint
as 21st Century
communication
Information Technology Workshop
12 February 2005
School of Public & Nonprofit Administration
Grand Valley State University
Pros
✦Standard global business tool for
presentations *
✦Makes the logical structure of an
argument more transparent
✦Combines reason and creativity
✦More convenient than overheads
✦Helps shy people
* Completion slideware includes Lotus Freelance Graphics,
OpenOffice Impress, Apple Keynote, Corel Presentations
Cons
✦Bores people
✦Oversimplifies information
✦Reduces ideas to data points
✦Discourages thoughtful discourse
1
Peter Norvig
✦Peter Norvig: The autocontent of the
Gettysburg Address
www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/
✦Nobody who visits Norvig's site will ever
want to use PowerPoint again, which is
why it should be compulsory viewing for
all management trainees, teachers and
public servants. - John Naughton, The
Observer, 21 December 2003
Edward Tufte
(author of Envisioning
Information & The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint)
✦“it induced stupidity, turned everyone into
bores, wasted time, and degraded the
quality and credibility of communication”
✦“often reduces the analytical quality of
presentations.”
✦“usually weaken verbal and spatial
reasoning, and almost always corrupt
statistical analysis.”
2
Don Norman
(author of The
Design of Everyday Things )
✦The problem is …
➤Pointless talks because of pointless meetings
➤Dense outlines, turned into bullets, and read
to audience
➤Slides used when there is no need for visual
aids
Cliff Atkinson
(management
consultant)
✦At some organizations, PowerPoint has
eclipsed written documents as the second
most-used communications tool after email.
✦there's nothing more toxic to an ecology
of critical thinking than forcing ideas into
a cookie cutter.
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/
3