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Monarchic speaker presides in oversimplified PowerPoint chair

January 29, 2008

Monarchic speaker presides in oversimplified PowerPoint chair

PowerPoint presentations lead to disrespecting the audience, writes Edward Tufte in his recent Wired article. The author complains about the oversimplification of data and the imposing emergence of the speaker over its audience. “Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience,” the author writes.

Although PowerPoint presentations make the life of the speaker easier, and have a ready-to-grasp appearance, they transform the once coherent finished sentences into “infomercials” and “pitchable sales.” “PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play - very loud, very slow, and very simple,” Tufte writes.

The Blogosphere seems to show solidarity with Tufte on this issue. Lennox pointes out in his Blurgl Blog entry the similarity between numerous but, alas, less quality desktop publishing and the abundance of PowerPoint bulleted presentations. “The problem here […] is that using PowerPoint is likely to continue to be the easiest and quickest route for most people. And they don’t really care about how well you remember it or even if you had a good time,” the blogger writes.

Picture: Flickr

Written by mockebird · Filed Under World, E-society, US, Intelligence