24. Killing Me Microsoftly

PowerPoint was created in 1984 by Dennis Austin and Bob Gaskins in Silicon Valley, and it has become famous, widely used ever since. PowerPoint has "revolutionized the worlds of business, education, science and communications." PowerPoint was used by, as it is exemplified in the text, people with the fear of public speaking, but obliged to do so. They could guarantee that the slides would prevent the speaker going off track or forgetting what to say. Yet, it "squeezes ideas into a preconceived format, organizing and condensing not only your material but - inevitably, it seems - your way of thinking about and looking at that material," being highly vicious. One PowerPoint hater, Jay Phelan from the University of California, uses "the creative interplay of a teacher's knowledge and the students' hunger for ideas," because it affects creativity. Due to the easy formation of a PowerPoint presentation and the templates, "they totally limit your ability to express yourself." There are, incredibly, 30 million presentations made daily and worldwide. In the business world, meanwhile, PowerPoint is a must to present, just like "being able to read." Another problem of the presentations is that it "doesn't teach children to make an argument. It teaches them to make a point," definitely "not a replacement for other tools in the classroom," such as a research paper. Nevertheless, a college professor says that nothing really is totally effective, and "it can be overused and distorted." PowerPoint "easily becomes a crutch for the poor student and a stumbling block to students already too disengaged from the act of learning," being too superficial in both school and work.

The author uses much humor throughout the essay, keeping the reader from getting bored and distracted. The part in which the author exercised her extensive sense of humor was: "as if your audience were a tribe of illiterate backwoodsmen." Her word choice to create the concerning-but-funny tone are impressive. However, her organizational style could be improved by firstly citing its origins, followed by praise and criticism. Although very convincing, she could've included more factual data and factual examples, because she only cites some college professors. The last paragraphs were completely informational and almost humorless, contradicting the first half of the essay, when the author played with her words and a colorful imagination. She varied sentence structure, and the flow from one subject to another proved itself very slippery, in other words, well done.