Power Point: Good or Bad?

In the article “In Defense of Power Point”, Don Norman argues against such people as Edward Tufte, who are convinced that Power Point is useless and evil. It talks about the common problem which consists of people reading of their slides, word for word. He states that most of the arguments against Power Point are absolute nonsense. He mentions that most critics think that the requirements for the speech-giver, the speech-listener- and the reader of a printed document are all the same. The article points out that speeches are undesirable when they are to long as well as when they are simply read of the show. It states that poor talks are not the result of Power Point, but are the fault of humans. Bullet points as well, are not a cause of poor speeches. In the old days people would use overhead projector to display slide/pages. It also mentions that most people give poor talks. Don Norman is of the opinion that most talks should only bring across a few critical points, as opposed to flooding the person with processable material. Both the article by Don Norman, as well as the article “Research points the finger at power point” say that talks should only contain a few important points, as the brain can not handle as much as people like to think. The brunt of this article points out that bad talks are not the fault of Power Point, or any other tool at that, but the fault of the person who made the show or talk. Some people like Tufte argue that the Columbia disaster was the fault of Power Point. A slide that had the danger assessment on it was incomprehensible, but it was not the fault of Power Point. The Australian article claims that Power Point is bad because it floods people with too much information, as the brain is only able to process so much information, and having somebody read aloud what you yourself are reading si too much for the brain to handle at once. This shows that bad slide shows and talks can not be blamed on the tool, but should be blamed on their creator.