The document discusses the impact and power of PowerPoint presentations. It notes that PowerPoint has become deeply ingrained in how people communicate, share ideas, and think. However, PowerPoint has also been criticized as shallow and as weakening analytical thinking. The document considers both benefits and criticisms of PowerPoint, such as its ability to help frame and organize thoughts, but also how templates can reduce analysis. It ultimately questions PowerPoint's role and whether it can be used to create art or change the world.

1. Powerpoint Generation
Anselm Hook
July 17th 2011

2. Once in a generation...
✤ a shift happens
✤ so powerful, so subtle, so pervasive
✤ that it becomes woven into our thoughts
✤ into how we communicate, do business, socialize, share ideas
✤ even how we dream

3. Yet in this case something
belittled...
✤ talked of as shallow
✤ as a trivialization of real thought
✤ avoided by the true rhetorician and wordsmiths
✤ mocked the academics of the world

4. The Gods say
✤ Alas, slideware often reduces the
analytical quality of
presentations. In particular, the
popular PowerPoint templates
(ready-made designs) usually
weaken verbal and spatial
reasoning, and almost always
corrupt statistical analysis. What
is the problem with PowerPoint?
And how can we improve our
presentations?

5. Less kindly...
✤ Power corrupts
✤ Powerpoint corrupts absolutely
✤ [ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html ]

6. It is an art with life and death
stakes

7. The laughing stock of digital media

8. Hated by haters

9. Completely eschewed by some

10. Wherein lies its power?
✤ Is it perhaps:
✤ In small well framed ideas?
✤ Planting a seed in somebody else’s brain?
✤ Allowing their imagination to help unpack the origami of thought?
✤ The twitter like terseness that forces one to be succinct?

11. Or is it...
✤ The utility as a thinking tool itself?
✤ Not merely as a presentation tool to share ideas
✤ But to help oneself frame, organize and re-organize thought?

12. Every dog has its day
✤ Bookmarks - Delicious
✤ Photos - Flickr
✤ Videos - YouTube
✤ Whatever crazy idea is running through your head - Twitter
✤ Powerpoints - Slideshare

13. What is the true test of a medium?
✤ Can it do art?
✤ Can it get you laid?
✤ Can it change the world?
✤ All of the above?

14. The Powerpoint Darknet
✤ Scientists speculate that the
Internet is mostly made up out
of Powerpoint
✤ Not searchable, only weakly
interacting with the visible
Internet.
✤ Yet containing presentations
on almost every imaginable
topic.
✤ To amuse, enlighten, teach.

15. It’s a crutch
✤ (in the way that a pogo stick is a crutch)

16. It’s related to thinking tools

17. It’s a game
✤ (In this case ‘Powerpoint Karaoke’)

18. It’s the native tongue of VC
✤ Make powerpoint
✤ Get funding
✤ Riches!

19. There are even style mavens...
Lessig is more

20. What’s our takeaway?
✤ Should we all leap to our computers?
✤ Reify our lives into tiny digestible slices?
✤ Trade power-points currency like grown up Pokemon?
✤ Koans that are inscrutable yet pregnant with meaning?
✤ Or should we ignore the cultural zeitgeist and write long tomes that
fully expurgate our demons like some kind of digital exorcist?