Comments on: PowerPoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely

By: Visual Being » Blog Archive » Making War with PowerPoint

Visual Being » Blog Archive » Making War with PowerPoint — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:10:15 +0000

[...] Making War with PowerPoint If you want to pick up some tips about using PowerPoint with real bullets, read Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks, and/or visit Arms and Influence where the editors highlight the role played in the Iraq conflict by Microsoft’s infamous software. Bloggers at Crooked Timber add to the discussion with a long, lively and fascinating series of posts that are well worth reading. Of course, the core of the issue is more about flawed visual communication styles and techniques than about the warmongering tendencies of presentation software, but it is soberingly apparent from the citations and discussion that visual illiteracy is as rampant in the military as it is in business. The main difference being that in business when a project bombs no one dies (usually). [...]

By: mlarson.org »

mlarson.org » — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:29:40 +0000

[...] -From Design Observer: “Operation Iraqi Freedom was planned in PowerPoint — giving “death by PowerPoint” new meaning.” [...]

By: jwphotodesign.com » Blog Archive » Death by PowerPoint

jwphotodesign.com » Blog Archive » Death by PowerPoint — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 00:04:09 +0000

[...] Operation Iraqi Freedom was planned in PowerPoint — giving “death by PowerPoint” new meaning. (Thanks to Hugh Dubberly.) Via Design Observer [...]

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:18:39 +0000

daniel martin, #89: “It has been my personal experience that preparing a five-minute talk to be given unaided (or perhaps aided only by a whiteboard) causes me to think carefully about the subject of the talk much, much more than does creating a powerpoint presentation. I suspect that this – the effect of preparing a presentation on the presenter – is really where the disadvantage of powerpoint lies. Note that if I am correct, this is directly relevant to the military example in the original post.”

Yep, I’ve found the same to be true for me. Slopping together enough bullet points to fill 15 slides is pretty quick and mindless; feeling comfortable giving a 10 minute presentation unaided or with only spontaneously-created aids (whiteboard) makes me really go through and think about what I’m going to say.

By: Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:30:01 +0000

It seems to me that there are one or two clear empirical questions here which ought to be amenable to proper investigation:

1. Does exposure to a Powerpoint presentation on a subject impart more or less information than some other form of presentation on the same subject? (Say, an unaided lecture, or a lecture given from accompanying plain text notes)

2. Does the act of preparing a powerpoint presentation on a subject cause the preparer to learn more or less about the subject than the act of preparing an unaided lecture? Assume the identical amount of time both for preparation and presentation was allotted to both methods.

My (completely speculative) guess is that the answer to the first question will not be easily determined, and any measurements will be within the margin of error, but that the answer to the second question will be a resounding “less”.

It has been my personal experience that preparing a five-minute talk to be given unaided (or perhaps aided only by a whiteboard) causes me to think carefully about the subject of the talk much, much more than does creating a powerpoint presentation. I suspect that this – the effect of preparing a presentation on the presenter – is really where the disadvantage of powerpoint lies. Note that if I am correct, this is directly relevant to the military example in the original post.

By: Ftl

Ftl — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:28:00 +0000

Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD’s contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology—above all information technology—has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war

It really is funny how the more you look, the more the entire overriding theme of the Bush administration is anti-intellectualism in all its forms. Not just anti-intellectualism in the sense of hating effete academics, but a fundamental distaste for any form of traditional intellectual authority, from accepted Military practice to Judicial experience to conventional political ethics to science and evolution to international law… in general, if there is a well-tested body of knowledge somewhere, they will send a Harriet Miers to implement it.

By: Amy G. Dala » links for 2006-08-15

Amy G. Dala » links for 2006-08-15 — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:43:35 +0000

[...] PowerPoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely (tags: war culture productivity iraq) [...]

By: Lindstrom

Lindstrom — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 04:04:33 +0000

That powerpoint slide is just vague enough to work!

Well not really, but Rumsfeld probably thinks so.

By: Nancy Irving

Nancy Irving — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:36:05 +0000

Now if we could only get Osama to start using PowerPoint, maybe we’d have an even chance in the GWOT…

By: infobong.com » linkdump for 2006.08.13

infobong.com » linkdump for 2006.08.13 — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:04:32 +0000

[...] Crooked Timber: PowerPoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely In lieu of clear written orders, military commanders on the ground are receiving instructions in the form of complex PowerPoint slides. You’ve got to click through to see this gem. (tags: PowerPoint war stupid) [...]

By: matt d

matt d — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 19:31:07 +0000

I once worked for a company that wrote its reports and proposals in PowerPoint. All of them. No one in the office ever used Word. We’d print off the reports in slide mode, bind them, and deliver them to clients. Everyone seemed to think that preparing 100 page text documents was a task better suited to a word processing program than presentation software. Or rather, they seemed to think that PowerPoint WAS word processing software.

By: Keywords » Achieving Representation

Keywords » Achieving Representation — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 16:08:06 +0000

[...] According to Crooked Timber, this powerpoint slide is Rumsefeld’s plan for ending the war in Iraq: [...]

By: Benjamin Nelson

Benjamin Nelson — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 15:44:00 +0000

Bi, perhaps you missed the next sentence: “They rushed to get the launch accomplished because speed was prioritized over quality and communication.”

The “headache” comment was directed at the correlation-causation aphorism, not at the NASA or Iraq points.

By: morgan’s log » Blog Archive » selling contempt

morgan’s log » Blog Archive » selling contempt — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 14:01:07 +0000

[...] There is plenty of commentary on how the use of PowerPoint stands in for significant analysis (and on the receiving end, how viewing PowerPoint slides stands in for understanding). One of the latest – about relying on The Point in military planning and briefing – is at Crooked Timber » PowerPoint Corrupts the Point Absolutely. [...]

By: bi

bi — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 08:35:18 +0000

Benjamin Nelson: “The problem was social and organizational” is as wankerific as one can get—it’s one of those fluffy vacuous phrases which pinpoint no particular problem and propose no particular diagnosis. It’s precisely the kind of vacuous phrase that’s encouraged by the medium known as PowerPoint. And the opposite of fluffy vacuous phrases isn’t abstrust postmodernist gobbledygook, it’s clear writing—isn’t there another thread about this?

And if the lives of millions of Iraqis isn’t “worth the headache” of looking at “jargon”, then I ask, what is worth the headache?