I just finished my re-read of Tufte’s excellent thumping of PowerPoint and there were two more quotes I couldn’t resist sharing:
At a minimum, we should choose presentation tools that do no harm to content. Yet PowerPoint promotes a cognitive style that disrupts and trivializes evidence. PP presentations too often resemble a school play: very loud, very slow, and very simple. Since 1010 to 1011 PP slides are produced yearly, that is a lot of harm to communication with colleagues.
and
Rather than providing information, PowerPoint allows speakers to pretend they are giving a real talk, and audiences to pretend that they are listening. This prankish conspiracy against evidence and thought should provoke this question, Why are we having this meeting?
Amen, brother!
So pull together $7 and go buy the damn pamphlet already. You really don’t want to give another presentation without it.
