Microsoft's PR Department Must Be Shitting Their Pants Right Now | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

Microsoft's PR Department Must Be Shitting Their Pants Right Now | Slog | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper:

The piece—front page! main story!—goes on to say that "Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession." General Petraeus calls sitting through a PowerPoint presentation "just agony." Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps says, "PowerPoint makes us stupid." General H. R. McMaster—"who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005"—is quoted as saying that PowerPoint is "dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable." Commanders also say that "the program stifles discussion" and that "the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can hold." A retired Marine colonel refers to giving half-hour PowerPoint presentations as "hypnotizing chickens." The Times refers casually to "the numbing sensation that accompanies a 30-slide briefing" and reports that "senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information."