The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

Comments

# William said on November 28, 2004 11:48 PM:

This will forever be the best Power Point presentation as far as I'm concerned:

http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/

# William said on November 29, 2004 12:26 AM:

Andy - I'm with you on that. When you showed me that I about fell over laughing.

# William said on November 29, 2004 2:55 AM:

The problem is not nutrition labeling. Bill, the tobacco companies were exempted from simple food and drug labeling and regulatory requirements in 1890, with the result that my Mom died before her time and where's my Nicorette.

You may not need labels on your bottled water. But in the absence of decent regulations and enforcement, several babies in Anhui province here in China DIED last May. Their parents thought the cheap formula would give them essential nutrients.

Many mothers in particular appreciate and use the clear black and white labels.

The problem with PowerPoint isn't that it's like food labeling or stating the obvious. Indeed, it's not the technology at all. I give great presentation and I use PowerPoint because I don't have the time for Flash.

The problem is the ideology that was created in the 1980s AROUND PowerPoint, and ideology which wanted corporate people to focus exclusively on "business needs", defined as ever-growing profits exclusively shared with shareholders, and not with many employees except as a vague promise...which is today, being broken at hundreds of companies every year, such as United Airlines.

PowerPoint ideology stresses bulleted "simplicity" and "focus". In practice what this means is that it is the presenter's job EXCLUSIVELY to focus on the bottom line and not speculate, in a "verbose" fashion on what the changes mean to employees or the community.

This ideology also appears in Flash, of course.

# William said on November 29, 2004 9:30 AM:

Edward - I totally agree with you. I'm not knocking labels at all - except on Water bottles where every one I've seen has absolutely NO information on them - fluff so to speak. I think you're exactly right on every point.

# William said on November 29, 2004 6:22 PM:

Long long ago, in a galaxy far away....

no.

Four Bores and eleventy years ago our forebores....

no.

<voice="Abe Simpson">
Back when I was your age, I worked for GM, teaching car mechanics to fix electrical problems; and technicians to fix car radios and instrument clusters. We used old fashioned stuff like overhead projectors and slides. And in between carrying the cow to school, in the snow, 15 miles each way, and it was uphill both ways, and we liked it, we read the stuff out like, well, like folks do today. I suppose its just nature's/Cthulhu's way of killing off folks in the dark or something. By boring them to death. With buzzwords. Oh, and I even handed out a dead tree edition with the pictures of the slides/overheads (like the notes pages in power pointless). It was a challenge keeping dull dry stuff from putting folks to sleep.
</voice>

Why do clocks go clockwise? Because that's the direction that the shadow moves on a sundial. And a clock is just a new-fangled sundial. Dumb practices get institutionalized and called "tradition." Like cutting the ends off the ham: because granny always did it that way. And its heresy to complain.

# William said on November 29, 2004 7:29 PM:

Peter - great post - enjoyed it much

# William said on November 30, 2004 2:26 AM:

Oh, I get it, Bill, sorry: on a water bottle you don't need to be told that it contains no sugar or protein.

D'oh as my son would say.

And I am certainly familiar with the feeling of Zero Content we get in meetings.

Phrases such as "Team will proact to gather requirements" have zero or negative content yet PowerPoint gives them the same status as "Workers of the World Unite!" For of course we all work on teams, and one would think that because employers pay us so much lovely money, of course we will be proactive, and we won't make up requirements.

However, a biz-speak which evades the real issues is useful in reminding us that work, by nature and Divine Providence's design, sucks.

# William said on November 30, 2004 2:41 AM:

If you only knew how much I agree with you. Particularly on this one, I knew I could count on you to agree. Nutrition lables on Evain while --- well Coraslim makes unregulated Zillions - it's disgusting. But there's something very American - as much as I love my Country - about Nutrition lables on water bottles that say :

Protein - 0
Carbohydrates - 0
everythign else -0


---- Don't make me think ;-)

But the bad part is that some people here actually noticed and think Water is Better than Diet Coke ---- BECAUSE of the nutrition label. We can debate Diet Coke/vs Water all year - but neither Edward, bill or any of the readers would posit "Well, the nutrition label sez" ;-)

# William said on November 30, 2004 2:48 AM:

Edward- please read this - and comment! http://msmvps.com/williamryan/archive/2004/11/28/21189.aspx

This guy is a total dickhead - and it's fun ragging on him ;-)