[IP] The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 20:41:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <jhall@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide
To: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/weekinreview/28SCHW.html
The Level of Discourse Continues to Slide
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Is there anything so deadening to the soul as a PowerPoint
presentation?
Critics have complained about the computerized slide shows, produced
with the ubiquitous software from Microsoft, since the technology was
first introduced 10 years ago. Last week, The New Yorker magazine
included a cartoon showing a job interview in hell: "I need someone
well versed in the art of torture," the interviewer says. "Do you know
PowerPoint?"
Once upon a time, a party host could send dread through the room by
saying, "Let me show you the slides from our trip!" Now, that dread
has spread to every corner of the culture, with schoolchildren using
the program to write book reports, and corporate managers blinking
mindlessly at PowerPoint charts and bullet lists projected onto giant
screens as a disembodied voice reads
* every
* word
* on
* every
* slide.
When the bullets are flying, no one is safe.
But there is a new crescendo of criticism that goes beyond the
objection to PowerPoint's tendency to turn any information into a dull
recitation of look-alike factoids. Based on nearly a decade of
experience with the software and its effects, detractors argue that
PowerPoint-muffled messages have real consequences, perhaps even of
life or death.
Before the fatal end of the shuttle Columbia's mission last January,
with the craft still orbiting the earth, NASA engineers used a
PowerPoint presentation to describe their investigation into whether a
piece of foam that struck the shuttle's wing during launching had
caused serious damage. Edward Tufte, a Yale professor who is an
influential expert on the presentation of visual information,
published a critique of that presentation on the World Wide Web last
March. A key slide, he said, was "a PowerPoint festival of
bureaucratic hyper-rationalism."
Among other problems, Mr. Tufte said, a crucial piece of information
that the chunk of foam was hundreds of times larger than anything that
had ever been tested was relegated to the last point on the slide,
squeezed into insignificance on a frame that suggested damage to the
wing was minor.
The independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster devoted
an entire page of its final report last month to Mr. Tufte's analysis.
The board wrote that "it is easy to understand how a senior manager
might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a
life-threatening situation."
In fact, the board said: "During its investigation, the board was
surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials
in place of technical reports. The board views the endemic use of
PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an
illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at
NASA."
The board echoed a message that Mr. Tufte and other critics have been
trying to disseminate for years. "I would refer to it as a virus,
rather than a narrative form," said Jamie McKenzie, an educational
consultant. "It's done more damage to the culture."
These are strong words for a program that traces its pedagogical
heritage to the blackboard or overhead projector. But the relentless
and, some critics would say, lazy use of the program as a replacement
for real discourse as with the NASA case continues to inspire
attacks.
It has also become so much a part of our culture that, like Kleenex
and Xerox, PowerPoint has become a generic term for any bullet-ridden
presentation.
Dan Leach, Microsoft's chief product manager for the Office software,
which includes PowerPoint, said that the package had 400 million users
around the world, and that his customers loved PowerPoint. When early
versions of Office for small business did not include PowerPoint,
customers protested, he said, and new versions include it.
"We're proud of it," he said, pointing out that the product is simply
a tool "a blank for you to fill in" with ideas and information.
"I feel like the guy who makes canvas and the No. 2 green viridian
paint," Mr. Leach said. "I'm being asked to comment on the art show."
His point is shared by plenty of people who say the criticism of
PowerPoint is misdirected. "The tool doesn't tell you how to write,"
said Bill Atkinson, the creator of HyperCard, an earlier program
considered by many to be the precursor to PowerPoint. "It just helps
you express yourself," he said. "The more tools people have to choose
from the better off we are."
It's likely, then, that PowerPoint is here to stay everywhere. And
not always for the worse. At the wedding reception of Lina Tilman and
Anders Corr last year in New Haven, guests made two PowerPoint
presentations. They were everything that slide shows usually are not:
wry and heartfelt works that used the tired conventions of the form to
poke fun at the world of presentations and celebrate the marriage.
NASA apparently still lacks a similar sense of irony. Earlier this
month, the space agency held a three-day workshop in Houston to give
reporters a firsthand view of its return-to-flight plans. Included in
the handouts were dozens of PowerPoint slides.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Graduate Student http://pobox.com/~joehall
EFF petition against RIAA mass litigation: http://tinyurl.com/nlib
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