[lit-ideas] PowerPoint (was Re: Re: Poet Managers)
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2007 09:11:37 -0700 (PDT)
----- Original Message ----
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, August 1, 2007 5:57:55 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Poet Managers
> I stopped going to what had been a very collegial annual aesthetics
conference (in a very congenial setting) when power point
presentations (the high points of arguments displayed on a movie
screen) began to outnumber real talks by real live people who could
speak human to human, thus giving the impression that they cared about
what they were presenting. <
Robert has reached the same conclusion as Edward Tufte in his instant internet
classic mini-essay "PowerPoint is Evil".
"Slideware
may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker
can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint
presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of
commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch... PowerPoint
is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than
supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such
misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your
audience." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
> PowerPoint cannot replace this sense of genuine dialogue, even granted that
> the 'human' presenter may be
reading from her own script. <
Exactly. I used to do a lot of meetings, usually the whole point of the
exercise being a fairly technical discussion about how to use our computer
technology to do what ever it was they wanted to do. The most common way to do
this was that I do a presentation of our offering, they present theirs. Which
meant half an hour to one and a half of monologue on how we wish that stuffed
worked. Eventually, I simply asked before meeting whether we should do
presentations or just talk. Latter was the choice of those who wanted to get
something done.
The reason presentations are not good for dialogue is simply because they are
by definition scripted, and if you know what is going to be said what exactly
is the point in pretending to have a discussion? The fact that information is
spread on several slides makes it even harder to react to the audience, or as
Tufte writes: "In
a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which
is about eight seconds' worth of silent reading material. With so
little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences
consequently endure a relentless sequentiality, one damn slide after
another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to
understand context and evaluate relationships. Visual reasoning usually
works more effectively when relevant information is shown side by side."
Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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