SourPoint

PowerPoint may be a threat to national security, suggests David Feith in the Wall Street Journal (7/31/09). David cites a recent article in Armed Forces Journal by T.X. Hammes, a retired colonel in the Marine Corps, who wrote that PowerPoint causes the Defense Department and military to make "decisions with less preparation and less time for thought." He says PowerPoint leads to "vague, oversimplified and easily misunderstood bullet points" and pines for the days when decision-makers formed opinions based on "succinct two- or three-page summaries of key issues."

Edward Tufte, a former Yale professor, has been making a similar point for years, using the Columbia space-shuttle tragedy as his example. Back in 2003, when the shuttle exploded, Edward "fingered PowerPoint as a culprit. He argued that information vital to NASA analysts had been shunted to the bottom of a typically cluttered PowerPoint slide." Turns out he was right, apparently. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded that the slide in question obscured "a life-threatening situation."

The board went on to say that NASA’s use of PowerPoint illustrated "the problematic methods of technical communications at NASA." However, others say the PowerPoint critics are off the mark. "Any general opposition to PowerPoint is just dumb," says Harvard pscyhologist Steven Pinker. "It’s like denouncing lectures — before there were awful PowerPoint presentations, there were awful scripted lectures, unscripted lectures, slide shows, chalk talks and so on." Another professor — a music professor named Jose Bowen — thinks PowerPoint undermines performance," and advises his colleagues to "teach naked," instead.