In defense of PowerPoint

Professionals, not the software packages they use, are responsible for the presentations they make. This essay contradicts the popular and widespread view of PowerPoint being responsible for bad presentations and engendering shallow thinking. The issue is particularly important because teachers in schools are having their pupils give PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint, and other presentation media, can be used poorly or well, depending on the skill of the user. Much of the essay gives the author's opinion, based on long experience in the computer industry, of how presentations should be designed and delivered, and stresses the need for simplicity. Curiously, the celebrated computer scientist Donald Norman later and independently wrote an essay of the same name and with much the same message (http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/in_defense_of_p.html)