Slashdot Mirror


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.

1 of 450 comments (clear)

  1. Re:just plain silly by SlashdotLemming · · Score: 2, Offtopic

    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.