The Ill Informed Argument of Death by PowerPoint

I have recently come across a series of comments about the Death of PowerPoint that are at best ill-formed and at worse reactionary.

Professor John Sweller of the University of New South Wales argues that the use of Powerpoint has been a disaster and should be ditched. He says it is effective to speak while showing a diagram or graph because it presents information in a different form. However he argues it is not effective to speak the same words that are written on the PowerPoint slide because it puts too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented.

An article in the Melbourne Age on the same topic by Christopher Scanlon of RMIT University titled The PowerPoint of No Return references a book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte. Scanlan claims Tufte suggests that PowerPoint affects the way we think.  "Technologies shape what we think about, how we think about it, and, more importantly, how we relate to the world around us. For the naive, bullet lists may create the appearance of hard-headed organised thought. But in the reality of day-to-day practice, the PowerPoint cognitive style is faux-analytical. Bullet outlines can make us stupid," says Tufte.

The basis of these argument are nonsense because they fail to address the core issues and so a real lack of what PowerPoint respresents in the context of presentation.

The use of PowerPoint as a backdrop to a live presentation is an important topic. I dislike the diffusion of focus when text is used as tag line or summary points and becomes a prop or excuse for bad performance with a bad script. I also hate the way the slide often seems to dominate performance. The speaker is often more concerned about the flow of the slides than the train of thought or narrative in the presentation.

PowerPoint is an aesthetic medium and I have always wonder why users of PowerPoint presentations don't understand the potential of this medium.

My guess and experience suggests that the majority of those called upon to prepare PowerPoint presentations have not been trained in the production and design of multi-media arts and yet that is the very basis of the medium.

PowerPoint was the first true populist multi-media platform. It commenced the democratisation of media. It opened up a huge new market for audio-visual manufacturers and hirers that saw a real opportunity to sell multi-media equipment across industry sectors to support live presentations rather than just their traditional markets of television, live concerts etc.and very little training accompanied its introduction other than how to use the software functionally.

It also created a whole new industry for film-makers, graphic designers, visual artists, writers etc. Unfortunately, the philosophy and practice behind its usage as a multi-media art form has never been properly explored, fully surfaced or recognised in either the artistic or business domains. And, of course, not everyone wants to or needs to develop skills in this area.

The arrival of this new technology into the hands of the novice meant the novice was more concerned about how the technology worked rather than how it might be harnessed to enhance the performance and content of the presenter. Common practice has been to spend more thought and time on making sure the entire technology of the performance works correctly - rather than the importance of the content, its potentiality and possibilities in presentation. If you are called upon to use PowerPoint and have only been educated to use text to advance your argument and that is the only medium you feel comfortable creating in then naturally you revert to the practice you feel most comfortable and know. If however, you can work with text, image and sound then a whole new platform opens up.

I would argue PowerPoint is a vital populist tool for performance and communication in the new whole brain thinking era. And it's use is in its infancy. Everyone now has the opportunity to become a multi-media artist. With the advent of Web 2.0, I am observing the ease with which my 11 year old twins and 9 year old use tools way beyond PowerPoint to create and present content aesthetically - a wondrous world of imagination that I didn't experience with my readin', riting' and 'rithmetic.

I use PowerPoint to re-enforce my live presentations conceptually never as a bullet point summary. The metaphor I use is that it is like theatre set design. As a tool it offers an incredible range of options in which to create an aesthetic tension that moves back and forth between live performance and contemporary multi-media to create powerful impressions. It offers design opportunities in visual images, moving images, sound in all forms. It can be edited quickly to accommodate any audience. Importantly, it can be edited to work in the moment. This is not possible with radio, television or print.

I think the argument against PowerPoint is a faulted one and one carried out in the main through ignorance of the capabilities of the live performance medium rather than anything more substantive. And dare I say it, reactionary!!! After all we live with radio, TV and print on a daily basis without having any control over that content. We were never able to edit textbooks. They were sacrosanct.

Here is a very simple contemporary media tool over which we have total creative control!! Whoopee!!!

Comments

[Alan]

a basic progressing history of visual presentation techniques

cave paintings
drawing in the dirt
using color in the dirt
hand and body gestures
papyrus rolls
walls, ceilings of churches, temples, cathedrals, public buildings
chalkboards
Edison's movie projector
3m overhead
slide projector
video on television screes
power point/keynotes

a progression of SHOWING THE AUDIENCE what you mean

still most people who use Power Point use it poorly, using the TEMPLATES of Gates and 3M or the gimmicks of Apple's Keynotes

3M and Kodak have been teaching/preaching about more effective use of visual imagery for about 75 years related to amount of type, size of images, use of color, typefaces, etc. yet POWER POINT users missed all that knowledge until recently.

the past couple years thanks to many graphic designers the quality and focus of individual images have improved

the integration of video, sound, live feed through hyperlinks have improved multi-media presentations

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about some of the contemporary use of PowerPoint, computer imagery techniques.

[glenn capelli]

Ralph - My figuring is that Powerpoint is misunderstood and very under utilised. Presenters have the opportunity to be Design Artists and each slide is a chance to suggest learning in layered textures. Thank you for your thoughts. Check Slide Zen piece April 2009 on glenncapelli.blogspot.com

I am running some Slide Zen and Music Zen Workshops for National Speakers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in October. All joy. Cap