We have met the enemy, and he is PowerPoint

Today's New York Times carries a cover story that would, to the casual reader, seem to indicate that our ongoing military travails in the Middle East have a lot to do with Powerpoint glut. Lots of big-wigs are quoted talking about how complex issues can't be reduced to bullet points, and one particular bullet is quoted -- "accelerate the introduction of new weapons" -- which is criticized for not saying who should do so.

PowerPoint is a convenient punching bag, easy to get laughs. 15-year-old in the house uses it for lots of 9th grade presentations, and it takes some serious reviews to make the presentations more than just a foil for large images. She tends toward unreadable type over very colorful photographs with really vivid, swoopy transitions and animation effects, and loses, in the process, what she is trying to communicate. She is, after all, 15 and not a graphic designer. She is also getting much better with coaching and feedback.

The PowerPoint Rangers that the Times goes to great length to paint in unflattering light are not, however, 15, nor are the military brass who command them. Making PowerPoint the fall guy for sloppy thinking is like blaming the typewriter for bad orders. PowerPoint is a tool, and like all tools, only does as well as the operator running it. It provides structure for communication, but not the content. And it's also not the only communication/structure tool available. Email is a bad tool for editing text; PowerPoint is a bad tool for conveying very detailed and naunced arguments. That said, if you can't provide a precis of your argument, then you haven't really mastered what your argument is -- and PowerPoint provides the structure to help you do that, but it won't do the thinking for you.

You don't blame Excel for spreadsheets that tote up how much Goldman Sachs made in the mortgage mess; don't blame PowerPoint for lazy thinking and an overreliance on swoopy transitions and animation effects that distract the viewer from the underlying facts (or lack thereof).