PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

In this New York Times Magazine article the author discusses the rising popularity of Microsoft's PowerPoint, and how it can lead to disastrous conclusions.

In August, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA released Volume 1 of its report on why the space shuttle crashed. As expected, the ship's foam insulation was the main cause of the disaster. But the board also fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ''slideware'' program. NASA, the board argued, had become too reliant on presenting complex information via PowerPoint, instead of by means of traditional ink-and-paper technical reports. When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide -- so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle. ''It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation,'' the board sternly noted.

I've run into this problem myself on several occasions. I once worked at a company where nothing was official unless there was a powerpoint presentation for it. Furthermore, no one would read a paper no matter how succinct, instead everyone demanded a slide deck to present the information. Generally it did not matter how complex the material was, or how much more appropriate it would be to present it in the form of a paper, if it was it powerpoint, it didn't exist.