Recent headlines quote Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who heads U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, criticizing PowerPoint presentations for creating “the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” When I looked a bit further I found this is the slide being referenced as not providing clear information.

hmmm…… I think action should be taken – and it has nothing to do with PowerPoint as an application, but against the company that decided this was worthy of being included in a presentation.

The offending “slide” was sourced from MSNBC. And I am confident it was not created in PPT, but by another application and imported as a graphic. Last, here is a really good webpage with a lot of people’s comments in defense of PPT. Among my favorites are:

This tool is highly misused and abused by presenters, secretaries and supposed PowerPoint ‘experts.’

It’s not the tool on the computer, it’s the tool AT the computer

I think a good strategy is to drop old PowerPoint slides from military briefings behind enemy lines. This should really confuse them…”

– Troy @ TLC