La pensée powerpoint (The Powerpont Thought)

Citation

Bazin, Y. (2011), "La pensée powerpoint (The Powerpont Thought)", Society and Business Review, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 188-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465681111144000

A well‐crafted pamphlet on the dominant institutionalized tool, that is Powerpoint could not be ignored by the Society and Business Review. Especially, considering the fact, that its author is not afraid to consider the academic literature when exploring the subject. The result is an accessible, yet rigourous, essay on the birth, diffusion and limits of this managerial instrument that is now used not only in corporations but also NGOs, universities and the military. Being a journalist, the author always illustrates his analysis as much with day‐to‐day examples as with scientific articles. Therefore, La pensée powerpoint can be useful for any scholars who is using “.ppt presentations” in research seminars, in classrooms and in organizations.

In the introduction, the author briefly presents the software created in the 1980s and its state of diffusion around the world (500 million users). This domination cannot be unproblematic and the second page opens on a quotation of James Nattis, general of the US Army: “PowerPoint makes us stupid!” The early 2000s is a time of critics from journalists (Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times says that “We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint” and Ian Parker in The New Yorker asks “can a software package edit our thoughts”?) but, also from scholars studying “the cognitive style of PowerPoint” (Edward Tufte, 2006). Applying the same logics from kindergarten to NASA can make tremendous damages. Therefore, its history must be clarified in order to better understand it.

The first chapter focuses on PowerPoint's birth and early years. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the growth of modern corporations made necessary the production of clear, readable and concise information. The creation of chart rooms in the 1920, in Du Pont for example, made possible the presentation of 350 charts constantly updated in order for the board of directors to make informed decisions. This period corresponds to the emergence of graphic managerial (or military) information. The different methods were gradually refined (colors, transparencies, designs and projections) until the arrival of the ITC in the 1970s that made the production of charts more and more accessible to every manager. In 1987, PowerPoint is launched, it is a software package designed to create, print and distribute black&white presentations to the audience. It has quickly been enriched to include predefined templates and animated transitions. In 1992, PowerPoint is already one of the most profitable units of Microsoft.

The new business model emerging in the 1980s is not about hierarchy and structure any more, it is about flexibility and adaptation. The project becomes the fundamental unit if the corporation and Frommer analyses this period in a very rigorous perspective (even referring to the scholarly literature, mainly Boltanski and Chiapello). In this “project” environment, the weekly meeting is a ritual that summarizes the activity in a concise exchange of information, a presentation that need a tool such as PowerPoint to effectively expose everything. Therefore, the software has become the archetype of a new way of working.

The third chapter analyses the impacts of this model on our discourses and communications. In a PowerPoint presentation, the number of words is limited to a strict minimum, leading managers to use keywords and avoid full sentences. The military vocabulary is favored and bulletpoints become the new structure of speech. However, making lists has nothing to do with building an argumentation or a reflection, it is made to convince, not to explain. Frommer sees in this, the manifestation of a disembodied discourse that has no speaker since anyone could be the presenter.

This new rhetoric conveys a fundamental problem that Frommer examines in chapter four. The vagueness generated by PowerPoint has become an instrument of manipulation and falsification. It is such a powerful tool for communication that, when well used, can contort any subject, giving the impression of management and control. Building his argument on the analysis of a concrete PowerPoint presentation on the organization of the H1N1 epidemic, the author perfectly illustrates how an apparently rigorous set of slides can be purposefully misleading.

If the consulting business has been the main medium for the PowerPoint presentation to be institutionalized, it is now used worldwide in all kind of organizations. In this process, meetings where conversations and arguments where taking place have mutated in performances during which a speaker tries to convince (and sometime entertain) the others. This shows can have a much wider audience and still be based on PowerPoint; the author details a business example (Steve Jobs famous annually presentations), a political one (Al Gore's inconvenient truth) and an artistic one (the architects competing for the Ground Zero project).

Since PowerPoint is a powerful tool for synthetic communication, it can also have devastating consequences when it becomes the only medium. Being unable to present complete and articulated discourse, it now conveys the inability of managers to apprehend complexity. Frommer sees in PowerPoint the perfect instrument for the 2×2 grid used by consultants anywhere at anytime. From SWOT analyses to the BCG matrix, everything can be illustrated on slides, leaving the rest outside; everything that is not “.ppt expressible” is forgotten. Consequently, large corporations have become “slides factories” (p. 162).

The seventh chapter can be seen as the peak of Frommer's argumentation: “a universal contamination”. From the UN to the US Army, the PowerPoint slide is now the unit of communication; outperforming the ritual military report. In France, hospitals and ministries are producing more and more presentations that are diffused and implemented in the whole organization. The Eighth Chapter focuses on the multiple uses of the software in the education system. From elementary schools to university, more and more students reduce their courses to slideshows and they do not need to take note since it is available on the intranet.

Frommer's book offers a fascinating exposé on Microsoft's software from its birth (with very interesting details on the creation and its initial purposes) to its diffusion not only within corporations but to every organizations. Written in a journalistic style but with a rigorous construction, this book will be readable by anybody and full of insights for any scholar.