By LAURENCE ZUCKERMAN
Good
Morning.
The title of today's
presentation
is: "The Effect of
Presentation Software on
Rhetorical Thinking," or "Is
Microsoft Powerpoint Taking
Over Our Minds?"
I will begin by making a joke.
Then I will take you
through
each of my points in a
linear fashion.
Then I will sum up again
at the end. Unfortunately,
because of the unique format
of this particular
presentation, we will not
be able to entertain
questions.
Were Willy Loman to
shuffle
through his doorway
today instead of in the
late 1940's, when Arthur Miller
wrote "Death of a Salesman,"
he might still be carrying
his sample case, but he
would also be lugging a laptop
computer featuring dozens
of slides illustrating his
strongest pitches complete
with bulleted points and
richly colored bars and
graphs.
Progress? Many people
believe
that the ubiquity of prepackaged computer software
that helps users prepare
such presentations has not only taken much of the life out
of public
speaking by
homogenizing
it at a low level, but has also led to a kind of
ersatz
thought that is
devoid of original ideas.
Scott McNealy, the
shoot-from-the-lip
chairman and
chief executive of Sun
Microsystems,
who regularly
works himself into a lather
criticizing the Microsoft
Corporation, announced two
years ago that he was
forbidding Sun's 25,000
employees to use Powerpoint,
the Microsoft presentation
program that leads the
market. (The ban was not
enforced.) Some computer
conferences have expressly
barred presenters from
using slides as visual aids
during their talks, because
they think it puts too much
emphasis on the sales pitch
at the expense of content.
Psychologists, computer
scientists
and software
developers are more divided
about the effect of
Powerpoint and its
competitors.
Some are sympathetic
to the argument that the
programs have debased public
speaking to the level of
an elementary school filmstrip.
"The tools we use to
shape
our thinking with the help of
digital computers are not
value free," said Steven
Johnson, the author of
"Interface
Culture," a 1997 study
of the designs used to
enable
people to interact with
computers.
Johnson uses Powerpoint
himself
(for example, during
a recent talk he gave at
Microsoft) but nonetheless said,
"There is certain kind of
Powerpoint logic that is brain
numbing."
Presentation programs are
primarily used for corporate
and sales pitches. Still,
the approach has leaked into the
public discourse. Think
of Ross Perot's graphs or
President Clinton's maps.
Critics argue such programs
contribute to the debasement
of rhetoric. "Try to
imagine the 'I have a dream'
speech with Powerpoint,"
said Cliff Nass, an
associate
professor of
communication at Stanford
University who specializes
in human-computer
interaction.
Other people, however,
have
made the opposite
argument, saying that
Powerpoint
has elevated the
general level of discourse
by forcing otherwise
befuddled speakers to
organize
their thoughts and by
giving audiences a visual
source of information that is a
much more efficient way
for humans to learn than by
simply listening.
"We are visual
creatures,"
said Steven Pinker, a
psychology professor at
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and the author
of several books about
cognition including "The
Language Instinct." "Visual
things stay put, whereas
sounds fade. If you zone out for
30 seconds -- and who
doesn't?
-- it is nice to be able
to glance up on the screen
and see what you missed."
Pinker argues that human
minds have a structure that is
not easily reprogrammed
by media. "If anything,
Powerpoint, if used well,
would ideally reflect the way
we think," he said.
But Powerpoint too often
is not used well, as even
Pinker admitted. He is on
a committee at M.I.T. that is
updating the traditional
writing requirement to include
both speech and graphic
communication. "M.I.T. has a
reputation for turning out
Dilberts," he said. "They may
be brilliant in what they
do, but no one can understand
what they say."
Visual presentations have
played an important part in
business and academia for
decades, if not centuries.
One of the most primitive
presentation technologies, the
chalkboard, is still widely
used. But in recent years the
spread of portable computers
has greatly increased the
popularity of presentation
programs.
Just as the word
processingprograms
eliminated many of the headaches of writing
on a typewriter,
presentation
software makes it easy for
speakers to create
slides featuring text or graphics to accompany their talks. The
programs replace the use
of overhead projectors and
acetate transparencies,
which take time to create and
are more difficult to
revise.
Most lecture halls and
conference rooms now feature
screens that connect
directly to portable
computers,
so speakers can easily
project their visual aids.
The secret to
Powerpoint's
success is that it comes free
with Microsoft's
best-selling
Office software package,
which also features a word
processing program and an
electronic spreadsheet.
Other presentation programs,
like Freelance from I.B.M.'s
Lotus division and Corel
Corporation's Presentations,
also come bundled with
other software, but Office
is by far the most successful,
racking up $5.6 billion
in sales last year.
Because most people do
not
buy Powerpoint on its
own, it is difficult to
tell how many actual users there
are. Microsoft says that
its surveys show that,
compared with two years
ago, twice as many people
who have Office are regular
users of Powerpoint today,
and that three times as
many Office users have at least
tried the program. Anecdotal
evidence indicates an
explosion in the use of
Powerpoint.
For instance, the program
is used for countless sales
pitches every day both
inside
and outside a wide
variety of companies. It
is de rigueur for today's
M.B.A. candidates.
The Dale Carnegie
Institute,
which imbues its students
with the philosophy of the
man who wrote the seminal
work "How to Win Friends
and Influence People," has
a partnership with Microsoft
and offers a course in
"high-impact presentations"
at its 170 training centers
in 70 countries. Microsoft
has incorporated into
Powerpoint many templates
based on the Carnegie
programs and has even
incorporated
the Carnegie
course into the program's
help feature.
Powerpoint is so popular
that in many offices it has
entered the lexicon as a
synonym for a presentation, as
in "Did you send me the
Powerpoint?"
The backlash against the
program is understandable.
Even before the advent of
the personal computer, there
were those who argued that
speeches with visual aids
stressed form over content.
Executives at International
Business Machines
Corporation,
the model of a
successful corporation in
the 1950's, 60's and 70's,
were famous for their use
of "foils," or transparencies.
"People learned that the
way to get ahead wasn't
necessarily to have good
ideas," wrote Paul Carroll in
"Big Blues," his 1993 study
of I.B.M.'s dramatic
decline in the era of the
personal computer. "That took
too long to become apparent.
The best way to get ahead
was to make good
presentations."
Critics make many of the
same claims about
Powerpoint today. "It gives
you a persuasive sheen of
authenticity that can cover
a complete lack of honesty,"
said John Gage, the chief
scientist at Sun Microsystems,
who is widely respected
in the computer industry as a
visionary.
Academic critics echo the
arguments made by Max
Weber and Marshall McLuhan
("The medium is the
message") that form has
a critical impact on content.
"Think of it as trying to
be creative on a standardized
form," Nass said. "Any
technology
that organizes and
standardizes tends to
homogenize."
Powerpoint may homogenize
more than most. In the
early 1990's Microsoft
realized
that many of its
customers were not using
Powerpoint for a very
powerful reason: They were
afraid. Steven Sinofsky,
the Microsoft vice president
in charge of the Office
suite, said that writer's
block was an issue for people
using word processors and
other programs but the
problem was worse with
Powerpoint
because of the
great fear people had of
public speaking.
"What would happen was
that
people would start up
Powerpoint and just stare
at it," he said.
Microsoft's answer was
the
"autocontent wizard," an
automated feature that
guides
users through a prepared
presentation format based
on what they are trying to
communicate. There are
templates
for "Recommending
a Strategy," "Selling a
Product," "Reporting Progress"
and "Communicating Bad
News."
Since 1994, when it was
first
introduced, the
autocontent wizard in
Powerpoint
has become
increasingly sophisticated.
About 15 percent of users,
Sinofsky said, now start
their presentations with one of
those templates.
The latest version of
Powerpoint,
which will be
released this month, will
feature an even more
powerful wizard. The new
version also includes
thousands of pieces of clip
art that the program can
suggest to illustrate
slides.
There is even a built-in
presentation checker that
will tell you whether your
slides are too wordy, or
that your titles should be
capitalized while bullet
points should be lower case.
Many
see the best antidote to the spread of Powerpoint
in a graphic medium that is expanding even faster than
the use of presentation software: the Web. Whereas
Powerpoint presentations are static and linear, the Web
jumps around, linking information in millions of ways.
Gage of Sun tries to use
the Web to illustrate his many
public speeches, though
a live Internet connection is not
as readily available at
lecterns these days as a cable
that can connect a notebook
computer to a screen for a
Powerpoint presentation.
"Powerpoint is just a
step
along the way because you
can't click on a Powerpoint
presentation and get the
details," said Daniel S.
Bricklin, who developed the
first electronic spreadsheet
for P.C.'s and more recently
a program called Trellix
that puts Web-like links into
documents.
Bricklin said the Web,
like
any new medium, required
new forms of composition
just as the headlines and
opening paragraphs of
newspaper
articles helped
readers skim for the most
information.
But he does not bemoan
the
popularity of presentation
software. "It was a lot
worse," he said, "when people
got up with their hands
in their pockets, twirling their
keys, going, 'Um um um."'
A Web Site on PowerPointlessness with ideas of how to avoid misusing Powerpoint.
May 31, 2001 - NY Times
PowerPoint Invades the Classroom
By LISA GUERNSEY
Melvin Mazara, a seventh grader at the Edison School in Union
City,
N.J., could not have
appeared
more engrossed in the morning's assignment. He and
his
classmates had been asked to
assemble
a report about a play they had just read, "A Raisin in the
Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry,
and
Kelvin's
teacher was reviewing the topics to address:
Who
are the major characters?
What are
the conflicts? What are the broad themes?
But
Kelvin
had other questions on his mind. Like his classmates,
Kelvin
was preparing his book
report
on PowerPoint, Microsoft's popular presentation software,
but
he had jumped ahead in picking a
background
color for his slides: a rich royal blue, featuring a
shimmering
gold key.
Next
came
the layout. He typed "conflicts" and it appeared,
perfectly
centered and in a matching gold color,
at the
top of one slide. After playing with font size (12 point?
14?),
he turned to a classmate. "How many conflicts
can we
have?" he asked, as he tested the look of two or three
bullet
points.
His
teacher,
John Bennetti, had started to walk through the rows of
desks,
his eyebrows raised.
"Enhance
it when you are done," Mr. Bennetti said emphatically. "When you
are done."
PowerPoint
— the must-have presentation software of the
corporate
world — has infiltrated
the
schoolhouse.
In the coming weeks, students from 12th grade to, yes,
kindergarten
will finish
science
projects and polish end-of-the-year presentations on computerized
slide shows filled
with
colorful
animation, bold topic headings and neat rows of points, each
introduced
with a
bullet
mark. Software designed for business people has found an audience
among the spiral notebook set.
"When
you
get to high school, you will need a lot of PowerPoint," said Nestor
Mendoza,
another
student
in Mr. Bennetti's class, "and in the real world, too. This gives
us time to practice."
But
just
as PowerPoint has its detractors in the corporate world, some educators
are disturbed
by the
program's march into the classroom. They are concerned that too many
students
will
become
fixated on fonts and formats without actually thinking about what they
are typing next to all those bullets.
Sandee
Tessier, a kindergarten teacher at San Altos Elementary School in
Lemon Grove, Calif.,
has
been
using PowerPoint with her 5- and 6-year-old
students
for nearly four years, integrating
it into
her regular reading and math lessons.
"People
come in and they have tears in their eyes because they can't
believe
what these little kids
are doing," Ms. Tessier said. "It's part of their day, like
picking
up a pencil."
Sometimes,
she said, she will take digital photographs of her
pupils
acting out scenes from a book, put the photos on slides
and ask
the pupils to describe their actions in words. In the
process,
the children create their own books.
"I
train
them how to get into PowerPoint, how to get into their
files,
over many months," Ms. Tessier said. "And then they type
captions
under each slide. Their spelling isn't that great, but
that's
O.K."
Ms.
Tessier
also encourages her pupils to write accounts of
their
lives and present them in front of the class.
"It is
sensational for oral language development," she said.
"They'll
say, `Hi, my name is Julie, and I like to eat pizza.' And
there
is their picture on the screen behind them, like on a TV
monitor.
They are the stars of PowerPoint."
According
to figures from Microsoft, the real star of the
classroom
may be PowerPoint itself: 69 percent of teachers
who use
Microsoft software use PowerPoint in their
classrooms,
an application second in popularity only to the
workhorse
of word processing, Microsoft Word.
The
software
is not only a teaching aid, used by instructors as a
substitute
for a chalkboard. It has become a tool for students to
use as
well. Suddenly magic markers and construction paper
seem so
Old Economy.
Some
critics
contend that PowerPoint's emphasis on bullets and
animated
graphics is anathema to the kind of critical thinking
students
should be learning in class.
"Beware
of PowerPointlessness," said Jamie McKenzie, the
publisher
of From Now On, an online journal about educational
technology.
Joan
Vandervelde,
a director of online professional
development
at the University of Northern Iowa, said that she
was
offering
courses this summer to help teachers combat
PowerPoint
abuse.
PowerPoint's
most pernicious quality, critics say, is its
potential
for substituting presentation polish for thinking skills.
The
software
is not merely a word processor with large fonts: it
can also
serve as a silent guide on the art of persuasion.
Step-by-step
instructions are offered by what Microsoft calls
the
Autocontent
Wizard, a tool that provides a template for
building
an argument. The wizard never fails to offer
instructions.
Click to add Topic No. 1. Insert real-life examples
here.
"It
fosters
a cookie-cutter mentality," said Jerry Crystal, the
technology
coordinator at Carmen Arace Middle School in
Bloomfield,
Conn.
"PowerPoint
to me is more about standardizing, rather than
allowing
students to uniquely express what they got out of a
lesson,"
said Colleen Cordes, a founder of the Alliance for
Childhood,
a nonprofit group that questions the use of
computers
among young schoolchildren. "It may have a
narrowing
effect on children's imagination."
According
to Microsoft, PowerPoint's introduction into the
classroom
was not planned when the program was developed.
But in
the mid-1990's, as Windows 95 became the operating
system
of choice in homes and offices, Microsoft set its sights
on an
arena it had not yet dominated: the K- 12 school market.
Schools
were already in the midst of a push to install more
machines
to take advantage of the Internet, an initiative
generated
largely by the federal government and technology
companies.
Microsoft rode the momentum to market Microsoft
Office,
a suite of business programs that includes PowerPoint,
as an
essential tool for education as well. The company offered
software
discounts, primarily to school districts, sponsored
workshops
for teachers, offered free online tutorials and handed
out sample
lesson plans.
The
strategy
worked. Among elementary and secondary schools,
Microsoft
Office is the most popular software package for word
processing,
spreadsheets and multimedia projects. More than 95
percent
of public school districts in the United States are using
or intend
to purchase Microsoft Office this year, according to
Quality
Education Data, a market research company. Among
individual
schools, more than 75 percent are using the product.
"Some
people
ask, `Isn't Office too much?' " said Marcia
Kuszmaul,
industry relations manager in Microsoft's Education
Solutions
Group. "The answer is, Absolutely not. Students push
Office.
Bill Gates has said that students give the toughest
workouts
to our products."
Gina
Herring,
a science teacher in Glen Ridge, N.J., is an
advocate
of PowerPoint, as long, she says, as it is used as a
supplement
to reports and oral presentations, not as a
replacement
for them.
At the
Ridgewood Avenue Upper Elementary School, where
Ms.
Herring
teaches sixth graders, she said she had seen her
students
develop better organizational skills using PowerPoint.
"It
allows
me to check their comprehension," she said, "and
allows
them to show what they have learned in a creative way,
in a
sequenced
way."
Ms.
Herring
is such a proponent of the product that she held a
training
session this month for fellow teachers in New Jersey.
Her
sixth-grade
students led some of the workshops, walking
over to
teachers' desks when they raised their hands for help.
Later,
a student who said he did not like to talk in front of an
audience
demonstrated how he had added sound to a slide show
about
a book he had read. As each slide appeared, the student's
voice
came from the speakers, reading rows of sentences, each
starting
with a bullet point.
Gary
Hank,
a math teacher at Lopatcong Township Elementary
School
in Warren County, N.J., was one of more than two dozen
teachers
who crowded into the workshop. "The kids would go
nuts over
this stuff," he said.
But
even
students seem divided in their enthusiasm for
PowerPoint.
Back in Union City, some of Mr. Bennetti's
students
were so eager to use the program that they had it open
and
running
before he told them to get started. Several of them
waved
their hands in the air, asking questions about "A Raisin
in the
Sun" that resulted in conversations that went far beyond
the six-
and seven- word phrases they typed next to the bullets.
But a
few
floors below, in a computer class of eighth graders
who were
presenting PowerPoint projects, the spirit was less
willing.
The
teacher,
Anna Rubio, had asked the students to use
PowerPoint
to create an electronic portfolio, describing and
linking
to digital projects that they had done during the year.
One by
one, students lumbered up to a computer at the front of
the dimly
lighted room and opened their slides, which appeared
on a
screen
behind them. They did not say a word or even look
at their
audience, but simply clicked the mouse button, drilling
through
their presentations in silence. Wild graphics, garish
colors
and bold titles flashed by. Their classmates paid almost
no
attention
and, like bored employees stuck in a late-day board
meeting,
looked at their own computer screens instead.
"I
asked
them if they wanted to read it or show it," Ms. Rubio
said.
"I guess no one wanted to read it."
Quentin Carranza, a kindergarted pupil from Lemon Grove, California, gets help from her teacher, Sandee Tessier. | Ms. Tessier's class also did a "Five Little Piggies presentation. |
|
Critics have complained about the computerized slide shows, produced
with the ubiquitous software from
Once upon a time, a party host could send dread through the room by saying, "Let me show you the slides from our trip!" Now, that dread has spread to every corner of the culture, with schoolchildren using the program to write book reports, and corporate managers blinking mindlessly at PowerPoint charts and bullet lists projected onto giant screens as a disembodied voice reads
• every
• word
• on
• every
• slide.
When the bullets are flying, no one is safe.
But there is a new crescendo of criticism that goes beyond the objection to PowerPoint's tendency to turn any information into a dull recitation of look-alike factoids. Based on nearly a decade of experience with the software and its effects, detractors argue that PowerPoint-muffled messages have real consequences, perhaps even of life or death.
Before the fatal end of the shuttle Columbia's mission last January, with the craft still orbiting the earth, NASA engineers used a PowerPoint presentation to describe their investigation into whether a piece of foam that struck the shuttle's wing during launching had caused serious damage. Edward Tufte, a Yale professor who is an influential expert on the presentation of visual information, published a critique of that presentation on the World Wide Web last March. A key slide, he said, was "a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyper-rationalism."
Among other problems, Mr. Tufte said, a crucial piece of information — that the chunk of foam was hundreds of times larger than anything that had ever been tested — was relegated to the last point on the slide, squeezed into insignificance on a frame that suggested damage to the wing was minor.
The independent board that investigated the Columbia disaster devoted an entire page of its final report last month to Mr. Tufte's analysis. The board wrote that "it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation."
In fact, the board said: "During its investigation, the board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA."
The board echoed a message that Mr. Tufte and other critics have been trying to disseminate for years. "I would refer to it as a virus, rather than a narrative form," said Jamie McKenzie, an educational consultant. "It's done more damage to the culture."
These are strong words for a program that traces its pedagogical heritage to the blackboard or overhead projector. But the relentless and, some critics would say, lazy use of the program as a replacement for real discourse — as with the NASA case — continues to inspire attacks.
It has also become so much a part of our culture that, like Kleenex and
Dan Leach, Microsoft's chief product manager for the Office software, which includes PowerPoint, said that the package had 400 million users around the world, and that his customers loved PowerPoint. When early versions of Office for small business did not include PowerPoint, customers protested, he said, and new versions include it.
"We're proud of it," he said, pointing out that the product is simply a tool — "a blank for you to fill in" with ideas and information.
"I feel like the guy who makes canvas and the No. 2 green viridian paint," Mr. Leach said. "I'm being asked to comment on the art show."
His point is shared by plenty of people who say the criticism of PowerPoint is misdirected. "The tool doesn't tell you how to write," said Bill Atkinson, the creator of HyperCard, an earlier program considered by many to be the precursor to PowerPoint. "It just helps you express yourself," he said. "The more tools people have to choose from the better off we are."
It's likely, then, that PowerPoint is here to stay — everywhere. And not always for the worse. At the wedding reception of Lina Tilman and Anders Corr last year in New Haven, guests made two PowerPoint presentations. They were everything that slide shows usually are not: wry and heartfelt works that used the tired conventions of the form to poke fun at the world of presentations and celebrate the marriage.
NASA apparently still lacks a similar sense of irony. Earlier this
month, the space agency held a three-day workshop in Houston to give
reporters a firsthand view of its return-to-flight plans. Included in
the handouts were dozens of PowerPoint slides.