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Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement. |
✖ Via Armed Forces Journal: “Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets. As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool” by T.X. Hammes, July 2009. “T.X. Hammes retired from the Marine Corps after 30 years of service. He is pursuing a doctorate in history from Oxford University.” Previously on Skandalon. |
• Aug 20, 2009 link notes [via] tagged:
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PowerPoint’s convenience for some presenters is costly to the content and the audience. These costs arise from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, an intensely hierarchical single-path structures as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narratives and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous chartjunk and PP Phluff, branding of slides with logotypes, a preoccupation with format not content, incompetent design for data graphics and tables, and a smirky commercialism that turns information into sales pitch and presenters into marketeers. |
✖ Via Edward R. Tufte, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, Cheshire: Graphics Press LLC, 2006, p. 4 About Edward Tufte: “Edward Rolf Tufte (born 1942) is an American statistician and Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. He has been described by The New York Times as “the da Vinci of Data”. He is an expert in the presentation of informational graphics such as charts and diagrams, and is a fellow of the American Statistical Association. Tufte has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. Tufte lives in Cheshire, Connecticut. He periodically travels around the United States to offer one-day workshops on data presentation and information graphics.” (wikipedia) Previously on Skandalon : Power Point. |
• Jul 14, 2009 link notes tagged:
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