Edward Tufte and Peter Norvig both have a lot to say about Microsoft PowerPoint, and not much of it is positive.  Both authors, in their articles and satirical PowerPoint presentations, respectively, address some issues regarding the program which are certainly not unfounded. At the same time, both acknowledge briefly that PowerPoint has the potential to be a useful tool if only its features are exploited effectively.

I don’t at all disagree with Tufte and Norvig’s conclusions that PowerPoint is often over-used and abused. I’ve seen many a presentation where entirely too much information was crammed into a single slide, the presenter read directly from his slides, or the data/information provided did not really contribute anything to the presentation.  Still, I find Tufte’s analogy of the use of presentation software to a Stalin-like tactic in his article “PowerPoint is Evil” to be a bit much (though humorous); I’ve never felt that a presenter’s bullet points were personally assaulting me as he lorded his “dominance” or knowledge over me. Instead, I like the clarity and conciseness those points usually offer.

While I think Tufte’s point about the amount of time children spend working on a single PowerPoint in school is well-taken, I don’t think children are generally “being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials.” Instead, they’re usually fulfilling a part of their technology requirement, and likely within an interdisciplinary framework (i.e.–their subject matter must pertain to something they’ve covered in their Social Studies class). They’re practicing with the most widely-used presentation software, regardless of its potential flaws.

I agree with Tufte’s notion that charts can sometimes be made too complicated in PowerPoint, but the graphics in his article from 2003 are outdated; the chart types have become much more streamlined and user-friendly since then.  I think his claim that “Microsoft abandons any pretense of statistical integrity and reasoning [by] sell[ing] a product that messes up data with such systematic intensity”  can be disproved by many educational and corporate presentations; if an accurate data set is chosen, it can be represented faithfully within PowerPoint if the user manipulates it responsibly.

Norvig’s “Gettsburg PowerPoint Presentation” makes similar claims; it reduces Lincoln’s famous speech to a serious of bullet points and awful charts (in a pretty entertaining way). Norvig claims that PowerPoint “makes it harder to have an open exchange between presenter and audience, to convey ideas that do not neatly fit into outline format, or to have a truly inspiring presentation.” As he himself notes, though, the program was never intended to convey the eloquence of a speech like Lincoln’s, or any other great pieces of rhetoric. (Perhaps his greatest concern is that the use of PowerPoint might have a detrimental effect on the decision-making process; he refers to an investigation by Tufte about the use of PowerPoint at NASA during the time preceding the Columbia tragedy.)

Despite his strong objections, Tufte notes at the end of his piece that it is not so much PowerPoint itself that is evil, but rather, the way many people choose to use it.  As Tufte says, “The practical conclusions are clear.  PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector.  But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it…[and it] routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content.”  This point is the one with which I agree the most: PowerPoint should never be a substitute for debate, discussion, and the exchange of ideas, but instead, a means of enhancing one’s presentation to encourage those conversations. I think it would be good to take a cue from Norvig here: “Use visual aids [like PowerPoint] to convey visual information: photographs, charts, or diagrams. But do not use them to give the impression that the matter is solved, wrapped up in a few bullet points.”