24. Killing Me Microsoftly

Julia Keller starts with an example of a coach who can encourage their team with a personal pep talk or a power point. Which is the one more likely to be chosen? The answer is increasingly starting to be power point. PowerPoint and other Microsoft tools are revolutionary tools for business, education, science and communications. The software seems to be everywhere. There always have been presentations and means of group communications but not the same scale as PowerPoint which can be condensed into a single file filled with information. The presentation would be able to do the talking with its graphs, pictures, statistics and text. But, there is a downside. While the use of PowerPoint effectively condenses the information, it also condenses the thinking of the presenter. It started small but it has since then dramatically grown and spread, starting to become something like a drug. Although PowerPoint is a very useful tool and has changed many aspects business and education but it might also be changing the younger generations for the worse. It has affected their creativity and styles of learning. It has started to encourage a very simple black and white style of thinking, PowerPoint teaches people to make a point and not make an argument. However, Keller writes that the result of anything depends on the user and not the tool.
Keller writes a very long and extensive article on PowerPoint. She points out the positive and negative aspects and quotes many people who use it on a daily basis. She writes that it is changing the world, for better or for worse. Her examples were good and supported whatever stand she was taking at the moment but she may have utilized too many, making it hard to understand the original point. Even though it was a cohesive essay, she may have included too many examples which make it confusing at certain points. Her points and her essay as a whole would have been more effective if it had not been as long as it was. She seemed to stretch out certain points and paragraphs which would have been more effective in a more condensed version. Overall, her article would have been stronger if it had been shorter but she had very good aspects to her paper.