PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

jpatokal writes "The New York Times confirms what we've suspected all along: PowerPoint makes you dumb. In a new essay, information theorist Edward Tufte outlines why PowerPoint 'forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.' The Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA agrees, noting that the slides produced by engineers to report on the wing damage were so confusing that 'a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation.'" Tufte's essay (and the shuttle/PowerPoint critique) has been available for sale since earlier this year, but the NYT article gives a greater sampling of its content than Tufte's website does.

Comments

Re:Operation Red Dawn

[Richard A Lake]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/12/14/sprj.irq .main/index.html

Re:Makes you dumb?

[NickFitz]

... is anything going to be reported on capturing Saddam Hussein?

FWIW, ITN here in the UK just came back from VT and the newsreader announced "America's top general there, clearly sober."

Re:just plain silly

[SlashdotLemming]

Please, no more...

It's because this is Slashdot and PowerPoint is a Microsoft product. If Slashdot stopped posting super spun MS bash articles like this, their traffic would decrease. All part of knowing your customer.

Quote of the day:

[mcrbids]

... 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint is actually making us stupider?

This year, Edward Tufte -- the famous...

Perfect slashdot grammar! At the NYT! We are WINNING! Grammer Nazis, CHARGE!!!