January 31, 2006
How does a software program "corrupt"?
Tufte's notorious diatribe against Microsoft's Powerpoint program can be merely summarized in its title: "Powerpoint Is Evil." And the gist of his argument in its catchy subtitle: "Power Corrupts. Powerpoint Corrupts Absolutely." Tufte claims that the slideshow software "trivializes content" by becoming a "substitute" for rather than a supplement to presentations. He equates Powerpoint to a totalitarian dictator that forces presenters to conform to an already-established, template-ready format. As an ambivalent Powerpoint user myself, some of Tufte's points might have been well-taken. However, his off-putting and abrasive invective overshadows any logical train of thought; his style is more suitable for a bombastic television pundit than a venerated Yale professor and expert on the visual display of data. All too similar to the presentations he condemns as "very loud, very slow, and very simple," Tufte's repellent rhetoric is 'full of sound and fury,' but signifies nothing other than a bitter academic railing against--of all life's important matters--a popular computer program.
Powerpoint is a tool, and as a tool, people can either embrace it for good or misuse it with disastrous results The analogy given in the article "Does Powerpoint make us stupid?" is an apt one: "Powerpoint doesn't kill meetings. People kill meetings. But using Powerpoint is like having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it." It is also somewhat irksome that Powerpoint has become the default in both academic and business settings, and employing any other means of visual aid sets you apart (and not always in the most positive light). However, presenters need to keep in mind that their presentation is to convey information or a key message to their audience, and that every aspect of their presentation should support this purpose. With this responsibility comes the burden of evaluating whether Powerpoint aligns with this goal, and choosing another form of aid if it does not.
Posted by Katie at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
Corruption of PWRPoint
In "PowerPoint is Evil," Edward Tufte blames Microsoft PowerPoint for trivializing the content of presentations over their form. He claims that instead of being an accessory to a presentation, it has "become a substitute for it." Tufte is astonished by how PowerPoint has become a routine exercise in elementary schools and how our children are being taught to deliver infomercials and sales pitches. He also provides an example in which a PowerPoint design template clutters and confuses a simple set of data, even though the resulting graphs are more colorful than the original table.
I definitely agree with Dennis and Patrick when they say that the meetings and presentations could have been just as dry without the PowerPoint. However, I do feel that the program has influenced strongly how presentations are now given. Instead of encouraging the presenter to incorporate effective and creative means of communication, PowerPoint simplifies the process and makes it more convenient to prepare presentations. The speaker now has to put less thought into the presentation itself and more into the artistic appeal of his or her slides: font colors and sizes, background schemes, text and graphics animations, sounds, etc. The time that could have gone into preparing and practicing a speech now goes into the trivial details of "how does my slideshow look?" I think that people have become dependent on PowerPoint to help them communicate: instead of referring to their slides as an aid, they all too often stare at the screen and recite the words already written on it.
It's not that PowerPoint necessarily leads to a boring presentation, but it does make it more likely. Do overhead slides or posters completely circumvent this issue? Not at all. I think the difference lies in the fact that when you are designing a poster or overhead slides, you are more conscious of your audience and what you are trying to say. You need to spend the time physically writing on transparencies or on poster board, instead of copying text mechanically from a paper or outline onto a PowerPoint slide. In my opinion, PowerPoint makes it much easier to become wrapped in the details of your slides and to neglect the actual substance of your presentation.
Posted by Emily at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)
January 30, 2006
Does PowerPoint Make Us Stupid?
The focus of this CNN article was on accomplished musician, photographer, and composer David Byrne. After originally wanting to create a spoof of the famous Microsoft program, Byrne apparently became infatuated with the possibilities of such a tool and ended up creating an $80 book and DVD compilation for PowerPoint lovers around the world. Not only did I find this absurd in its own right, but I found the uproar that it has caused to be even more captivating. The debate arises from visual artists who claim that PowerPoint passes off unimaginative speech or writings as legitimate ideas. They claim that the program “perverts everything from elementary school reports to NASA's scientific theses…with bullet points and stock art.” Activists such as Edward Tufte, the man who wrote the article “PowerPoint is Evil” (as documented in Dennis’ blog) even claim that PowerPoint hinders children’s learning. I personally find both stances to be far too radical.
My question for both sides of this debate is simple: Why not just accept PowerPoint for what it is and stop trying to make it out as either the savior or downfall of education and thought in this country? To 99 percent of Americans, PowerPoint is a helpful tool that may assist them in organizing a visual aspect into their oral presentations. Saying that the presentation will be worse or better strictly because of PowerPoint slides is illogical, especially when considering the possible use of other visuals. Who is to say that a presentation that uses PowerPoint slides will lack the original ideas that one with say a poster may have? Who is to say that an identical presentation will be inherently better from the use of PowerPoint as opposed to slides on an overhead projector? The PowerPoint slides themselves do not in any way influence the creative thought of an individual writing a speech, and I feel the two sides in this debate have created an argument where one should have never existed in the first place.
Posted by Patrick at 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
PowerPoint is Evil
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
While reading Edward Tufte's commentary on PowerPoint, I got the impression that I was reading angry rant from a man who had sat through one too many boring meetings. But instead of assigning blame for the boring meeting upon the speaker, he assigns the blame upon the presentation technology utilized by the speaker. According to Tufte, PowerPoint seems to be a destroyer of creativity, turning "everything into a sales pitch".
Though PowerPoint is often misused, I think Tufte takes a small annoyance of his and turns it into a quixotic crusade, without much to show for his efforts. It appears as if PowerPoint has no valid use to him, in any situation. Take for instance his criticism of the use of PowerPoint in schools. He says, "rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials." He seems to suggest that learning to use PowerPoint prevents children from learning to write or learn much of anything else, for that matter. He reasons that if children are learning to use PowerPoint at school, then they are better off not going to school at all. I don't know about you, but all of this rhetoric seems way over the top.
My basic question for Tufte is this: do you think any of those "very loud, very slow, and very simple" presentations would have been much better if PowerPoint wasn't invented? Personally, I think that the quality of a presentation lies in the quality of the presenter, not in his or her slide presentation technology. PowerPoint is merely an extra tool in the speaker's toolbox, free to be used and misused as its owner desires.
Posted by Dennis at 01:04 AM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
"How I Write" What I Learned
Reading the biography of Anne Firth Murray enticed me to attend the "How I Write" seminar. Her bio highlights multiple impressive feats, most notably her writing for the United Nations. In her talk, she discussed the importance of journal and letter writing. She indicated that she wrote, in long hand, correspondences with many distant friends. In doing so, she was always practising her writing skills. Murray also discussed her love for composing poetry. She said that she loved to "play with words." I, too, enjoy reading poetry (mostly Whitman and Thoreau) but I'm a little hesitant to write my own!
In her role as a philanthropist, Murray noted the importance of effective writing in communicating a business plan. She offered an anecdote that detailed her experience with writing a proposal for funding from the World Bank. She underscored the importance of "articulating a vision" and communicating why your "vision of change" can help your cause. In this context, a tension between writing as an academic and writing as an activist arose. One must write in a scholarly fashion yet not permit his or her writing to sensationalize an opinion, while writing a grant. Excessive focus on opinion, with out much concentration on style and diction, can jeopardize one's effort to obtain a loan. All in all, I learned the importance of writing for a vision, while ensuring that your vision doesn't compromise your writing etiquette.
Posted by Brandon at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
Reflections on class: Proposal Presentations
This week was definitely a landmark one for the Winter eRhetoric class -- within the last 7 days, students not only completed their first written assignment for the class (research proposals), but they also drafted and delivered their first presentations (proposal presentations). That's a big push for the first three weeks of the quarter. But despite the pressure and the fast pace, everyone is doing wonderfully. Granted, a few people ran over time (the longest 5-minute presentation ran 11 minutes) and a few people had some tech glitches, but overall the presentations went smoothly. Some of my favorite moments from this week's presentations had to be Lee's use of an X-Box gaming commercial in section 3 and Cheri's impromptu acting out of a segment from an MMORPG in section 8. Both were classic, for different reasons.
One of the most rewarding parts of this week, however, derived from the presentations, but took place online.
It's the way that the eRhetWiki page on Presentation Tips grew and evolved from a real skeletal list at the beginning of the week to a comprehensive overview of different presentation strategies. I was very impressed by the collaborative effort of the class in modifying the page -- and as I watched it develop, it reaffirmed to me the potentials for collaborative writing and knowledge-making. The page still needs a bit more fine-tuning (it's gotten a bit large and unwieldy), but it will provide us with a solid foundation for our discussions of presentation technique and oral rhetoric in the week to come.
The only thing I'm kicking myself about is that I didn't have the foresight to save the original text of the Presentation Tips page for comparative purposes. I thought the history would store it indefinitely, but I see now that it must only store a finite number of entries. I'll know better next time.
Posted by calfano at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
Blogging from Iraq
This blog really exemplified what I believe news blogs are most useful for. Not as the complete source of information, but instead "the seasoning--or maybe the garnish--in a reader's well-balanced media diet." There are certain things that Blogs have trouble doing. Getting access to people in power is one of them. Large news organizations are able to get those interviews that blogs are just unable to.
Yet they are able to do things that news media can’t. For instance there is the classic problem of who can police the police? If the news media is your only source of news where are you going to get information on corruption in the news system? One needs an independent source of information.
The Back to Iraq (B2I) blog was an example of another way blogs are useful. Because the large news organizations can get interviews with the powerful, they tend to ignore smaller stories. That was the niche that B2I filled. It was able to report stories that the regular news media wasn’t able to, and, in fact, allow the readers to ask for stories they wanted to hear. At one point readers wanted information on the Turcoman people. The author, Christopher Allbritton, was able to give them a story on the ethnic policies of the region, and how the Turcoman people were hoping to bring Turkey into the conflict.
Where else can readers actively guide what stories they want to here. Blogs are able to do that, but I sincerely doubt that the news media will ever be able to be that direct.
Posted by David at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)
January 18, 2006
Technically, this matters!
[See Jaehyeok's entry below for article summary]
The act of posting to a blog brings to my mind the consideration of two things:
Firstly, the Internet is believed by many to provide seemingly complete anonymity, but this cannot be further from the case. Whether it be through technology, in the form of IP Addresses, whois lookups, etc., or through textual analysis and cross-referencing, it is usually trivially easy to discern the identity of any author of online text. And when it is not trivial, it is almost always possible through analysis of server logs. "Anonymous" postings are only anonymous in the mind of the casual reader.
Secondly, once something is posted for more than a few seconds, it falls entirely out of the author's control. Utterly. Not only are sites cached/copied by search engines such as Google and public archives such as web.archive.org, but internal caches are made whenever somebody views the page. If content is publicly accessible online for more than a few days, it becomes effectively impossible to delete completely. There will always be a copy somewhere, accessible by someone.
But don't get me wrong - I am not calling Jessica naive. On the contrary, the article reveals that she was entirely aware of the first point. When given the option to password-protect the blog, Jessica thought it would be "too much trouble for [her] friends to have to type in a password," leaving the blog open for access by others. While she "thought there [were] so many people with their own blogs, [her's would not even] come up on the radar" she was aware of the possibility and, more importantly, does not appear to be against it. I disagree with the earlier post in this regard - I do not see Jessica as a victim of technology in any way: she employed it to suit her needs, and simply met with unexpected results.
And it is this technology aspect that the article fails to delve into. Witt, the author, uses the sex story to captivate the reader's attention. After all, who doesn't want to read an article about a young woman's risque blog and the sexual exploits detailed therein? Requiring a reason to tell the full story (indeed, she spends 95% of the article doing just this, lost in her novel of an example), Witt brings up the tired argument about the incessant decline in American values. She draws comparisons to the 50s. An era without the Internet. An era without the means of media communication that made the discovery and subsequent revelation of Jessica's story possible to begin with. The technology is the story here: how the emerging technology has led to a reduction in privacy, both involuntarily, and as seen here, entirely voluntarily. Jessica's blog is completely immaterial in the "continued degradation" of American morals. It is merely the conveying medium for said degradation. But Witt entirely ignores this aspect, failing even to offer a definition, however incomplete, of the word "blog".
So back to the story Witt goes.
Nearing the end, she cobbles together the example of a second woman of similar fate, as if saying "it wasn't just her! this could happen to you!", which of course is predicated on the fact that you, also, blog about your own sexual encounters in vivid detail.
Overall, what results is little more than an amalgamation of disparate thoughts, all of which conveniently lead back to Jessica and back to story time. And I can't pretend to claim the article wasn't interesting, captivating, even, but one more fit for publication in a tabloid than a reputable news source.
Then again, this is the Washington Post.... (sorry, couldn't help myself ;)
Posted by JeffSeibert at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
Reflections on class: 1/18
I wish I had had my camera with me today to snap some shots of our class today -- it would have been nice to have started out this entry with a impromptu pic of the students in their first real week of eRhet mode. But, the pix will just have to wait.
I accomplished my primary goal in both sections today: giving everyone a better sense of the proposal assignments and discussing possible models for their own research proposals. As always, the lesson plan seemed a bit rushed (surprising to me that this would even happen in my early loooong class)and I didn't get to spend as much time on the specific of writing style as I would have liked. We'll do more of that in the weeks ahead, never fear, but I felt like I was dealing with the proposal only in broad strokes today without enough attention to minute detail. As it was, however, it felt like I was pushing the edge of everyone's patience with our extended analysis of the samples ... though I think that important to discuss the variety of approaches to the assignment.
So the proposals roll in on Friday, and I'm excited to read them. What didn't get discussed in class today were this quarter's topics -- many of which are completely original and fascinating. I think that the class as a whole is going to enjoy listening to what their classmates are working on over the next 8 weeks.
I'll end this entry with my favorite comment of the day. Today it goes to Emily in section 3, who, when I started to use the stylus for the first time, muttered something under her breath that approximated "really awesome" -- except it was more colorful in language and captured the "oooh" factor that Wallenberg can have much more effectively than my rough paraphrase does.
Posted by calfano at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)
Danger in cyberspace
This article depicts the terrible consequences of Jessica’s blogging. She put dirty secrets about her sex life on her blog and did not think that it would go public. One day, however, her blog appeared on a popular online gossip column. Even though she deleted the blog as fast as she could, her co-workers and boyfriend had already read her blog and Jessica could not avoid losing many of her things.
In this article, she is portrayed as a victim of today’s online society. The emotional descriptions of her thoughts in the momentarily changing circumstances cause readers to understand her condition and feel pity for her. For instance, through her blog, her gloomy mood, after she has been fired and lost her boyfriend emphasizes her, can be emphasized. Moreover, the last paragraph says that the combination of Jessica’s “ordinary” characteristic and the power of the Web made this desperate situation. In other words, this article warns that any bloggers may experience the same situation as Jessica’s.
People like Jessica are victims of the online society, but it does not mean that they do not have any responsibility for their outcome. Because cyberspace is a newly created world, its dangers are not delineated clearly. Hence, Web users must realize and accept the possibilities of disadvantages and dangers of the Web and must try to avoid them. We don’t know when or how the openness or the rapidity of the internet will threaten us. Our minds should continuously be careful when using the Web.
Posted by Jaehyeok at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
"The Blogosphere"
Internet Blogging: Analyzed by Sophie Mason
Sophie Mason’s article, “The Blogosphere,” begins with a provocative statement attacking the conventional belief that the internet is “human nature” altering. Introducing her article in this fashion, Mason succeeds in hooking her reader (especially one like me, who believes that the internet has fundamentally changed human nature). She effectively transitions into why internet blogs offer a personal platform for communication and information. In her discussion of blogs, Mason defines them, analyses what they are used for, who uses them, and their positive and negative attributes.
Mason’s credibility is manifested through her ability to illustrate examples of why she thinks blogs are both good and bad. For example, Mason claims that bloggers are both close watchers and readers of the media, and therefore are prone to correcting fallacies within the media. Eradicating any skepticism surrounding her claim, Mason highlights how an article in The Guardian was lambasted by bloggers. Bloggers proved that The Guardian’s assertion about Paul Wolfowitz and the Iraq War was inaccurate; The Guardian apologized and withdrew the story. Evidently, blogs can effectively serve as a check on the media’s reporting. However, I agree with Mason’s argument that blogs aren’t a substitute for good journalism. It is important to consider blogs’ liberal, public accessibility and therefore potential for erroneous information.
Posted by Brandon at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)
Let the games begin!
After what seems like a series of small disasters, I'm so relieved to be writing this first entry on the eRhetBlog, a place for Winter 2006 eRhetoric students to experiment with shared authorship and constructing an ongoing online dialogue.
It was a rocky start -- from misfiring passwords to missing style sheets -- it took more time than I thought to get to this point. Even now, some quirks remain, including the fact that it seems that everytime I change pages, Movable Type prompts me for my username and password. But at this point, I'll gladly brave inconvenience if it means that the posts post, and the page reliably appears when you type in the URL.
Posted by calfano at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)