PowerPoint and its discontents

My Observer column of January 12 was about the pernicious way PowerPoint has sapped the will to think of the corporate world. Now, courtesy of the wonderful Arts and Letters Daily, comes a flood of insightful pieces on the same topic:

Here, for example, is a lovely essay by Julia Kelly published on January 22. Thomas Stewart is calling for PowerPoint to be banned. And presentation guru Edward Tufte has even entered the fray with a scathing piece on PowerPoint graphics. Quote:

“The original table, so effective, collapses into incoherent chartjunk. … Everything is wrong with these smarmy, chaotic graphics: scaling, low resolution, color codes, breaking data into pieces, branding, an indifference to data and evidence. Poking a finger into the eye of thought, these graphics would turn into a particularly nasty prank if used by cancer patients seeking to discover their survival chances. “

Meanwhile, if Lincoln had had PowerPoint here’s how the Gettysburg Address would look.