PDA

View Full Version : Calling All Powerpoint Warriors



SWJED
04-13-2006, 12:20 PM
See SWC member Zenpundit's blog - On Thought, Presentation and Connection (http://zenpundit.blogspot.com/2006/04/on-thought-presentation-and-connection.html).


...Powerpoint has its strengths and weaknesses like any other tool or format for the presentation of ideas. Plenty of mediocre, muddled, empty or damn fool ideas have been committed to paper or were presented orally and were nonetheless considered persuasive by virtue of their eloquence. Bad powerpoint briefs might still easily be translated into bad journal articles and we'd be no better off. The failure in either case stems from a failure to think effectively and an undue passivity on the part of the audience that should approach orthodox ideas of their institutional " received culture" with as much skepticism as they do new ones.

What powerpoint does well is communicate deep ideas quickly and effectively by engaging the visual centers of the brain by offering representational models. It enhances cognitive "connection" to concepts. Anyone who has taken physics or geometry, certainly fields with as much depth as military theory knows the importance of the diagram in teaching concepts -although poorly explained visuals can also mislead (recall your elementary school diagram of an atom as a miniature solar system). Powerpoint slides can make poorly conceived ideas "look" better, no argument, but they cannot change the substance...

SWJED
04-13-2006, 12:24 PM
... PowerPoint Pogue's Homepage (http://www.nbc-links.com/powerpoint.html).

Tom Odom
04-13-2006, 01:34 PM
Reminds me of a song (sung to the Ballad of the Green Beret)....ehem clearing throat,

Virtual Soldiers from the Sky,

Palm pod warriors who net or die.....

Should I go on or do you guys have more rotten tomatoes?

zenpundit
04-13-2006, 04:52 PM
Thanks Tom !

One wonders what John Boyd would have done with Powerpoint coupled with some Flash animation... :cool:

zenpundit
04-13-2006, 04:56 PM
Ppl really need to look at that Pogue page - very amusing

Martin
04-13-2006, 07:43 PM
Thanks Tom !

One wonders what John Boyd would have done with Powerpoint coupled with some Flash animation... :cool:
I'd really like to see or hear his lectures!

Loved his standard way of continuation "very nice, but".

Martin