Honestly, I kind of cringed as I went through Edward Tufte’s piece. We get it: he hates PowerPoint with a burning passion, and will do everything he can to relentlessly attack it. Of course, he certainly backs up all his claims and provides good examples to prove his point, but I felt like he was too focused on everything that was wrong with slideware-style presentations. The one thing that kept circling around in my head as I read his argument was simply this: given the amount of meetings people have on a daily basis, how many trees would we have to kill to provide paper handouts to everyone in the room, instead of just projecting the material onto the screen? If he really hates PowerPoints, given their lack of statistical data and whatnot, and how news sites show 10-15 times more information on a computer screen, why not just use that format and project a news-style screen of data?

To be fair, though, I agree that oversimplifying important information and reading off the slides can detract from the essence of the presentation, especially with highly technical matters such as aerospace engineering, in which such missteps can prove dangerous. However, PowerPoint does have its benefits, such as visualizing information, which can help certain learners better absorb the material. It helps people show the big picture and main points, particular through the use of bullets. It helps people organize their thoughts and learn to be more concise, although this should probably be avoided in certain subject areas. And lastly, I think it helps young students identify what is important, instead of going on and on and on about irrelevant data points. Of course, now I probably sound like Tufte, writing all this but on an opposing side and without 25 pages to back up my argument. Overall, though, I think Tufte was way too extreme.