A PowerPoint ban has been proposed by a Swiss political party, the Anti-PowerPoint Party (APPP). If the proposal receives 100,000 signatures, then a referendum would be put before voters and PowerPoint could legally be banned in Switzerland.
The party founder, Matthias Poehm, has written a book called The PowerPoint Fallacy, which party members must buy. Some cynical onlookers suspect Poehm of organizing the APPP to promote sales of his book.
Poehm's argument is that PowerPoint presentations are a waste of time to 85 percent of the people who attend them. By calculating the number of people who attend PowerPoint presentations each week, he calculates that this amounts to a waste of about 2.1 billion Swiss francs ($2.5 billion dollars) every year.
Poehm's book suggests that instead of PowerPoint, presenters should use flipcharts to more fully engage their audiences. He values the flipchart both for the creativity it encourages, and for the attraction to the audience of watching the presentation being built. He doesn't mention, however, whether deciphering poor handwriting is attractive or creative.
The company that developed PowerPoint software was purchased by Microsoft in 1987 and has been steadily revised over the years. The "modern" version came in 1997 with PowerPoint 97, when slide transitions were introduced. PowerPoint is included with most versions of Microsoft Office, and it is one of the most popular presentation programs, particularly in business.
PowerPoint has encountered its share of detractors in the past, including Edward Tufte, an expert in the graphical display of numerical information. Tufte criticizes PowerPoint for channeling thinking into bulleted lists and predefined templates which weaken verbal and spatial reasoning.
Microsoft has little to worry about at this point. Since its creation on May 5, APPP has signed up 245 members, according to PC World. Only 99,755 to go!
