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

Why "PowerPoint makes you dumb"?

[mongbot]

This criticism applies to any slide show, performed with software or without. Just because MIcrosoft have produced a popular and highly selling slideshow program is no reason to single them out.

I knew

[michiel.h]

I knew! I knew! I knew!

That's why I Switched to Open Office Presentation Long ago.

HAHA!
I'm smart, you're dumb!
I'm big, you're small!
I'm strong, you're weak!

I'm smarter, I'm smarter, I'm smarter!
*dancing around, doing the I'm-smarter-than-you-and-am-going-to-annoy-the-cra p-out-of-you-untill-you-kick-me-in-the-nuts dance*

Re:Not exactly

[drinkypoo]

You can say that Powerpoint is a suboptimal piece of equipment for doing this but since it allows you to import images your argument is complete nonsense. There is nothing stopping you from composing your slides in the software package of your choice, exporting to some sort of bitmap format (perhaps though postscript as an interim step, then converting to a bitmap with ghostscript) except laziness. It would still be less work than drawing the slides by hand. However people choose to use the internally-provided tools for slide generation.

Both you and Tufte are Anti-Microsoft FUD spreaders. There are plenty of reasons to be Anti-MS, but this ain't one of them.

For example, the low resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also encourages users to rely on bulleted lists, a ''faux analytical'' technique, Tufte wrote, that dodges the speaker's responsibility to tie his information together. And perhaps worst of all is how PowerPoint renders charts. Charts in newspapers like The Wall Street Journal contain up to 120 elements on average, allowing readers to compare large groupings of data. But, as Tufte found, PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements. Ultimately, Tufte concluded, PowerPoint is infused with ''an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.''

I mean, look at the text. "PowerPoint also encourages users", "PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements", "an attitude of commercialism". All of these sentences make it clear to me that the problem lies with the users, not the software. The software's design might be flawed but it is in no way responsible for the problem, and for reasons which reach more broadly than the EULA. A pusher encourages people to take drugs, but it's someone's own choice to take them or not. Powerpoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements, but is that Microsoft's fault? It's not like you can't generate charts outside powerpoint. And finally, an attitude of commercialism? I have my own attitude, which I enforce over the will of the software, not the other way around. If it doesn't ordinarily do things the way I want to do things, I will find a way around it.

Perhaps the only valid complaint about powerpoint is the low resolution. I have indeed never seen a high resolution powerpoint slide, so I am willing to believe it doesn't support high resolutions. The solution? DON'T USE IT. If your company forces you to use powerpoint, that is simply not Microsoft's fault; it's the fault of your employer. Otherwise, make up some slides which match the resolution of your output device (which incidentally, even in this day and age, is typically only 800x600 and is almost never better than 1024x768) and run a slideshow. Change slides with the mouse wheel.

The real problem is the people unwilling to think outside the [Powerpoint] box. Yes, I hate the base expression too, but it worked well here, so I decided to use it. Similarly, if Powerpoint doesn't work well, I will choose not to use it. Powerpoint is not a substitute for actually LEARNING how to assemble a presentation, something upon which many books have been written, and about which many classes have been taught. People believe that it is, and they let its little wizards walk them through making a presentation and they think it's going to turn out to be a work of art. Powerpoint's wizards exist to let complete idiots turn out a reasonably workable presentation. That's all they do. Believing they do something else is downright superstitious.