Blog :: Recent Comments

 

Ben Clemens wrote in response to
Waging War With PowerPoint

it’s great to read you again! Sorry not to have noticed starting up again. Powerpoint is certainly tempts people into lazy thinking despite it’s capacities to be used for good not evil, etc. Any tool that has caused so much cognitive harm should be regulated I think, semiotics 101 credit required for activation key. That said, Robert McNamara gave lucid, beautifully thought out presentations that impressed everyone no end and took us straight into the crapper…

Jun.03.06

 

Tom Chi wrote in response to
Waging War With PowerPoint

I sort of agree, and sort of not. Powerpoint is a tool and like many tools there are many productive and unproductive ways to use it. At the most abstract level it is a way of sequentially displaying screens containing text, images, video and audio. That’s a pretty amazing feature set and it can provide a rich framework for all sorts of activities from interactive demonstrations to rapid prototyping.

Now I think the problem with Powerpoint is one inherent to many tools — i.e. what you get out of it is a function of what you put in. If you throw together a presentation in 15 minutes using all bulleted lists, then your thinking was sloppy and it shows. But a well done bulleted list can aid incredibly for analysis of a complex whole (it is less good for understanding emergent system-level effects).

I have read Tufte’s full report on the matter and it has its own share of engaging graphics and sloppy thinking. Not to slam him too much, but his understanding of the role of electronic tools is pretty narrow (and his insistence on high quality printed graphics as the answer to everything gets a little tiring). I see Powerpoint as a tool that is sort of a lower-budget version of Director or Flash. You get object-based graphic manipulation, you get limited interactivity, and there are affordances to use text more naturally. Not a perfect tool, but by no means flawed by design.

Feb.24.05