Power Point Peeve
Please see my earlier post for ways to contribute to the relief of victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Here’s my peeve about Power Point: Those who use it inevitably throw lists of words or phrases or bullet points or sentences up on the screen. We are expected to read them. But before we are given even a minute to read them at our own pace and so to make sense of them, the person doing the presentation, having nothing better to do while we are reading, begins to read them too, aloud, at a different pace from mine.
Suddenly I am thrown into brain fuzz. I can’t concentrate on the reading because it would be disrespectful to ignore the speaker. I can’t concentrate on the speaker because the speaker apparently expects me to read and absorb what is on the screen. When I try to do both, I find I can do neither, and so I begin to get frustrated. This leads to annoyance with the entire presentation, into which I direct my mind’s logical function to begin shooting fatal holes. Result? The Power Point presentation has made another enemy.
Why can’t people who are determined to use this ingenious technological device just be quiet and give me a sec to read on my own in order to be ready for them? Or why, if they’ve given me a chance to do that, must they waste their time and mine with reading to me what I’ve just read when they could be taking the opportunity to be developing, expanding, deepening the point?
Could it be that when Power Point is in use, there IS no other point? Is the medium the only message? The result is not education, intellectual enhancement, or wisdom. It is brain fuzz. Do they know this? Maybe they are really up to something else entirely while I am agonized or stupefied in my seat. Is Power their Point?
Here’s my peeve about Power Point: Those who use it inevitably throw lists of words or phrases or bullet points or sentences up on the screen. We are expected to read them. But before we are given even a minute to read them at our own pace and so to make sense of them, the person doing the presentation, having nothing better to do while we are reading, begins to read them too, aloud, at a different pace from mine.
Suddenly I am thrown into brain fuzz. I can’t concentrate on the reading because it would be disrespectful to ignore the speaker. I can’t concentrate on the speaker because the speaker apparently expects me to read and absorb what is on the screen. When I try to do both, I find I can do neither, and so I begin to get frustrated. This leads to annoyance with the entire presentation, into which I direct my mind’s logical function to begin shooting fatal holes. Result? The Power Point presentation has made another enemy.
Why can’t people who are determined to use this ingenious technological device just be quiet and give me a sec to read on my own in order to be ready for them? Or why, if they’ve given me a chance to do that, must they waste their time and mine with reading to me what I’ve just read when they could be taking the opportunity to be developing, expanding, deepening the point?
Could it be that when Power Point is in use, there IS no other point? Is the medium the only message? The result is not education, intellectual enhancement, or wisdom. It is brain fuzz. Do they know this? Maybe they are really up to something else entirely while I am agonized or stupefied in my seat. Is Power their Point?
posted by G.Rap | 2:39 PM
4 Comments:
From what I understand, the program was originally intended for salesmen. I sleep incredibly well during PowerPoint. The fragmentation of information is wonderfully soporific.
I have long thought the same thing, G. It is even worse when the presenter is saying something that is NOT on the slide while you are reading it.
Oh Gideon,
It is too funny how much suffering this Power Point program has created. There are so many reasons I dislike this program, chief among them being the amazing waste of paper that results from everyone in a room having a hard copy of the presentation which is being displayed in color, on a big screen, for everyone to read. My other big complaint is the sheer incompetenece with this program. Sadly there seems to be a disease that is rampant in my company whereby if you are over the age of 35 you probably can't use Power Point and will instead scribble notes on a piece of paper for an under 35 coworker to generate.
The human brain is quirky when it comes to multitasking, and everybody's quirks are different. I can read and listen to someone else at the same time, but I can't read for comprehension while speaking. This was a problem for me in highschool classes wherein we students took turns reading aloud in class.
I would read a paragraph aloud; then the teacher would ask me some very basic question about its content, and I would be clueless.
I wasn't listening. Sorry. I was reading aloud. I can't do both.
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