
Harvard Just Discovered That PowerPoint Is Worse Than Useless - ohjeez
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/harvard-just-discovered-that-powerpoint-is-worse-than-useless.html
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jdauriemma
I think most slide decks are pretty useless but this quote was striking:

> "PowerPoint's celebrated ease and efficiency actually mask a profoundly
> disturbing but little-understood transformation in human communication. The
> slides, bulleted lists, and flashy graphics we all now take for granted
> [have] promoted a new, slippery 'grammar,' where faulty causality, sloppy
> logic, decontextualized data, and seductive showmanship have replaced the
> traditional tools of persuasion and argument [resulting in] the corruption
> of language [and] the dumbing-down of society."

Pulling this quote may not have been a strong choice. It requires the reader
to accept the premises that language is being "corrupted" and that society is
being "dumb[ed] down" in order to buy into the argument that PowerPoint is
bad. Yes, PowerPoint is bad. No, I don't buy into the notion that society's
changes today are without precedent - people have always blamed new
technologies for corrupting language and making society dumber.

> [Writing] will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they
> will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written
> characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have
> discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your
> disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers
> of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be
> omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company,
> having the show of wisdom without the reality.

\- Socrates, arguing against reading and writing

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Aperocky
Powerpoint is a godsend tool for the babies, lots of pictures, easy to grok,
perfect for sliding through without thinking at all. Which apparently makes it
very appealing to a certain set of corporate leadership, so they can then
proceed to make whatever decision they already have in mind after scrolling
through it.

There's a million way to convey meaning better than powerpoint, markdown comes
to my mind, instead of focusing on dazzling the audience, it focus on
conveying information.

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bediger4000
Anybody who's sat through several corporate PowerPoint presentations knows
this on a gut level.

My kids have all had to use PowerPoint at school to present some work. The
enthusiasm they had for including as many wipes, masks, and effects as
possible was a real joy. It's just that I expect more from a software
architect, or a sales engineer.

