24. Killing Me Microsoftly

             Julia Keller wrote about the PowerPoint, a program made by Microsoft for public speaking that influenced the world of business, education, science and communications in less than one decade. It was a success because Microsoft realized the people`s need to have a visual aids and outside notes in order to have a complete speech. The program allows the speakers to organize their ideas into a series of bullet points that is easier for the audience to absorb the information and also guarantee that the speakers will not forget their information. However, PowerPoint has its negative sides because since the function of the program is to condense the ideas into several bullet points, sometimes the speakers get limited in their way of thinking and looking at the material. PowerPoint was so wildly used among the people that it needed no introduction or explanations since everyone knows this program. On the other side, there are people who dislike PowerPoint such as Jay Phelan who is an evolutionary biologist and also a professor in University of California. He believes that a good lecture does not need PowerPoint because the transfer of content from teacher to the students would be lost and it also limits the people`s imagination. PowerPoint is so powerful that Clarke L. Caywood, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University, declared that no business man would able to carry out a good speech without the help of PowerPoint. Whether PowerPoint is a good program for learning is a debated idea because although it is helpful for the businessman but on the other side, it is damaging the children`s ability to think and connect the ideas.

             Julia Keller wrote an essay to inform the people about the influence of PowerPoint on the people nowadays and its impact in the world. In the beginning of her essay, she has a strong attention getter about the story of a football team. She introduced the main topic of the essay smoothly by saying that coach used PowerPoint to review the strategies to the teammates. Her humoristic way of writing makes the readers interested throughout the essay and the contrast of ideas between the positive and negative sides of PowerPoint keeps the readers attentive on the subject. The many examples and statistics enrich the whole article and enforced how powerful PowerPoint is in the society. An example would be when she wrote that there are 300 million users worldwide of PowerPoint and several people are dependent on it. This example allows the readers to understand the influence that this program has upon the people and its power to control the areas of business, education, marketing and others. She also consulted the opinions of many professors and people who are constantly involved with the use of PowerPoint. The interesting part is that these opinions are most of the time, contradicting one another because some professors believe that the use of PowerPoint can bring negative affects to the students while others believe that it is actually beneficial. However, the author used too many opinions and examples that can be tiring for the readers. She also repeats her ideas several times and it can make the readers lose their interest for the subject rapidly.