[Hidden-tech] Microsoft Office suite vs. other options

[Roger Williams]

>>>>> Frank Aronson <fsaronson at gmail.com> writes:

  > This will quickly be labeled off-topic, but I have to ask, why does every
  > Mac vs. PC thread always devolve into a Microsoft mugging?

Neither Duane's nor my comments were intended it to be Microsoft "mugging".
Other tools that copy Word and PowerPoint have exactly the same problems.

The point that we and Edward Tufte were making is that each of these design
tools have an inherent "cognitive style" -- a specific built-in approach to
using information to solve problems -- and a user interface that encourages
certain sorts of thinking, problem-solving, and design decisions, and
discourages others.

  > As for the thumping that PowerPoint is getting in this thread...  it's
  > kind of like blaming the hammer and nail for bad construction.  It's not
  > the tool, but the person wielding the tool who is ultimately at fault.

You make a good point: responsibility for poor presentations lies with the
presenter.  But it's more complicated than that.  PowerPoint (and similar
slideware) has a distinctive, definite, well-enforced, and widely-practiced
cognitive style that is contrary to serious analytic thinking. PowerPoint
actively facilitates the making of lightweight presentations.

Tufte identifies the characteristics of PowerPoint's cognitive style as
foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spacial resolution, a deeply
hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organising every type of
content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments,
rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focussed spatial
analysis, conspicuous decoration and fluff, a preoccupation with format not
content, and an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales
pitch.

He makes the point that a better metaphor for presentations is good teaching.
Teachers seek to explain something with credibility -- which of course is what
many presentations are _trying_ to do.  But the core ideas of teaching --
explanation, reasoning, finding things out, questioning, content, evidence,
credible authority -- are contrary to this hierarchical market-pitch approach.

-- 
Roger Williams <roger at qux.com>
Chief Technical Officer, Qux Corporation
433 West Street, Suite 8, Amherst, MA 01002, USA
Tel +1 413 253-6400 * Fax +1 508 302-0230 * GSM +1 508 287-1420