The Pros And Cons Of Powerpoint

My great-grandfather owned a business in the 1940s and conducted business solely through conversation, mail, and newspaper ads. My grandfather took over the family business in the 1960s and conducted business through conversation, mail, newspaper ads, projectors, and telephones. My uncle took over the family business in the late 1990s and now conducts business through conversation, mail, telephones, computers, internet, software, tablets, apps, and many other forms of technology. One form of technology dominant in all workplaces is PowerPoint. “Some 30 million [PowerPoint] presentations [occur] each day. It 's the second-most-used corporate communication tool after e-mail” (Wahl, 2003). PowerPoint has taken over the corporate world and has become a presenting tool almost all employees use. Sherry Turkle (2004) says PowerPoint is “developed to serve the needs of the corporate boardroom” (p.

“In fact, some corporations, like 3M, are banning PowerPoint from their offices” (Wahl, 2003). Employees can learn through analyzing, interacting with others, and discussing. However, PowerPoint encourages presentation, not conversation. Bullet points summarize everything into a few words, leaving no area to analyze or discuss the information further. According to Julia Keller (2003) PowerPoint condenses information into a “preconceived format” (para. 8) that is one-sided based on the presenter’s view of the information. A case study of three PowerPoint presentations directed to NASA officials was conducted by Edward Tufte (2003), an American statistician and professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University, to provide evidence of the dangers in using bulleted outlines. The case study was summarized by the