Thou shall not PowerPoint

Sir, Tim Harford with his recommendations of how to give a Ted talk of May 5, reminded me of the following letter I sent my Executive Directors at the World bank colleagues' in December 2003. 

Thou shall not PowerPoint

• Dear Colleagues,

• When we were small, our fathers taught us never to FingerPoint anyone, and today we also need to teach kids not to PowerPoint one another.

• Yes, I have seen some splendid use of PowerPoint presentations, but, in general terms, the world is not a better place for it.

• PowerPoint has empowered so many people with so little to say with a deep belief that the world is waiting for them to predicate, for hours.

• PowerPoint is little by little replacing all decent readable issue papers with thick bundles of copies of PowerPoint sheets, each one containing less than 15 words, in beautifully irrelevant colors, except when replaced by thin bundles containing miniature unreadable copies of aforementioned sheets.

• PowerPoint is forcing the world to structure its whole thinking process in terms of bulletpoints.

• NO, thou shall not PowerPoint me and I promise not to PowerPoint you … too much.

• Happy Holidays

• Per

• December, 2003

Extracted from “Voice and Noise”