shaping the future of nyc

No matter what your line of work, it’s only getting harder to avoid death by PowerPoint. SinceMicrosoft (MSFT)launched the slide show program 22 years ago, it’s been installed on no fewer than 1 billion computers; an estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations are given each second across the globe; the software’s users continue to prove that no field of human endeavor can defy its facility for reducing complexity and nuance to bullet points and big ideas to tacky clip art. On June 18, the Iranian government made the case for its highly contested nuclear program to world leaders with a 47-slide deck. (Sample slide: “In the Name of ALLAH, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, Why Enrichment is an Inalienable and Chartered Right under the NPT?”) A few weeks later, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced the momentous discovery of the Higgs boson, or “God particle,” using 52 PowerPoint slides in the Comic Sans font that inspired more mockery than awe. Two years back, the New York Knicks tried to woo LeBron James with a PowerPoint pitch, which may explain why James won his first NBA championship in Miami.

As with anything so ubiquitous and relied upon, PowerPoint has bred its share of contempt. Plug the name into Twitter and you’ll see workers bashing the soporific software in Korean, Arabic, Spanish, and English as each region starts its business day. Part of this venting may stem from a lack of credible competition: PowerPoint’s share of the presentation software market remains 95 percent, eclipsing relative newcomers Apple (AAPL) Keynote, Google (GOOG)Presentation, Prezi, and SlideRocket, according to Meinald Thielsch, whose study of PowerPoint appears in the May 2012 edition of the journal Technical Communication. Microsoft’s other ubiquitous products, such as Word and Excel, don’t draw the same widescale ire. As PowerPoint’s sole function—unlike word processing and arithmetic—is grounded in visual arts, its slides do more harm than good. They bore audiences with amateurish, antiquated animation and typefaces and distract speakers from focusing on the underlying structure of their creators’ speeches. It’s a wonder that today’s groundswell of PowerPoint refuseniks has taken so long to emerge.

“The best speakers at any corporate level today grip an audience by telling a story and showing some slides to support that,” says Thielsch. The boldest among them do away with slides entirely.