The Debate over PowerPoint

1. Absolute Powerpoint: Can a Software Package Edit Our Thoughts", Ian Parker, New Yorker, 28 May 2001. (Answer= "yes")

    

2. The Ask E.T. Forum: some great links on Tufte's own moderated online forum, e.g,. Peter Norvig's Gettysburg Address PP version

    

3. Norvig's essay, "PowerPoint: shot with its own bullets" about his Gettysburg project.

    

4. "Is PowerPoint the Devil?", Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune:

   "What sort of world is reflected in PowerPoint? A world stripped down to briefly summarized essences, a world snipped clean of the annoying underbrush of ambiguity and complication. But is that the world in which we want to live? And are the values prized by businesses - succinctness, directness, manipulation of symbols - also the values we want running our schools and nurturing our children?

   On the other hand, don't computers help everyone to work smarter and faster, and aren't students immeasurably enriched by an easy familiarity with technologies such as PowerPoint?"

    

5. Tufte's answer: "PowerPoint is Evil": Power Corrupts, PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.

    

6. Professor Raffensperger's counterargument critique of Tufte, illustrated with his PowerPoint version of the Gettysburg Address
7. Paul Krugman, "Bullet Points Over Baghdad"

    

8. What do you think?

Created by Ellen Strenski for WR 139W, Fall 2006, UC Irvine