PowerPoint滥用之祸

    很少有软件像PowerPoint那样无处不在，却又饱受诟病。微软（Microsoft）没有统计过PowerPoint 的单独使用量，但其发言人确认Office（也就是包含PowerPoint的办公软件包）在全球的用户多达10亿人。

    不是每个人都乐意看到PowerPoint的繁盛。记者伊丽莎白•巴米勒在《纽约时报》（theNew York Times）的一篇文章中描述了军方领导人对PowerPoint渗透阿富汗战争的担忧。海军陆战队的将军詹姆斯•N. 马蒂斯说：“PowerPoint使人愚蠢。”其他人则认为PowerPoint扼杀了讨论和质疑。即使呈现的是同样的内容，它和口头报告比起来通常也缺乏分析，没有说服力。此外，它还耗费了大量的人力和时间。根据《纽约时报》的报道，军方网站Company Command问中尉山姆•拉克索尔一天最常做的事是什么，他回答说：“制作PowerPoint幻灯片。”他说的是大实话。

    某些连长应对这个抱怨的方法就是试图限制PowerPoint的使用。他们规定不得使用演示幻灯片，或者限制幻灯片的数量。

    设计专家、同时也是《微光》（Glimmer）的作者沃伦•伯杰说这是个好点子，但却没有切中要害。他认为问题不在于PowerPoint本身，甚至不在于花了多少时间准备幻灯片，而是使用PowerPoint的方式。做演示时最困难的地方就在于直视观众。演示软件恰恰就可以避免这一点。

    伯杰在电话采访中告诉我：“人们利用PowerPoint来避免和观众的交流。不管他们是否意识到这点，这就是他们使用PowerPoint的目的。”

    按照即将上市的新书《小消息，大影响》（Small Message, Big Impact）一书的作者和演讲家特里•肖丁的说法，人们使用PowerPoint的原因就是“这是最好的、最被社会接受的辅助工具。”她指出，没人愿意做一场信息量巨大但却没有说服力的乏味演示。但是同伴压力以及由来已久的对公众演讲的恐惧常常会支配我们的行为。

    这就指向了一个有趣的可能性：我们求助于演示软件其实是因为我们潜意识里希望把观众对我们本身的审查和评判转移到幻灯片身上。

    “它让人们不再关注你，”伯杰说。“所以演示者基本上只需要和幻灯片打交道，而不用管观众。类似的是，观众也只用和幻灯片打交道，而不用管演示者。”

    说来也怪，TED会议的发起人理查德•索尔• 沃尔曼作为推动PowerPoint演讲流行的罪魁祸首却坚持不用讲台，他的意图恰恰就是为了加强演讲者那种因受到过多关注而不安的感觉。（他的原话：“我就希望让演讲者觉得自己更加脆弱。”）

    基于云的演示软件Prezi是PowerPoint统治地位的最新挑战者，公司首席执行官彼得•阿瓦伊非常坦率地承认，演示软件也无法改进条理紊乱的推理。软件开发者的责任是拓展用户的选项，而说服力是一个社会问题。阿瓦伊告诉我：“解决社会问题不是我们的任务。”

    Few pieces of software are as ubiquitous -- and as maligned -- as PowerPoint. Microsoft (MSFT) doesn't track PowerPoint usage numbers but a spokesperson confirmed that Office -- the software package that contains the program -- is used by one billion people worldwide.

    Not everyone is happy about that. In an article for theNew York Times, reporter Elisabeth Bumiller described military leaders' dismay over how PowerPoint had infiltrated the war effort in Afghanistan. "PowerPoint makes us stupid," said Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps. Others conveyed their impression that PowerPoint stifled discussion, discouraged questions, and generally conveyed less analysis, less persuasively, than the same content would if delivered orally. It also sucked up man-hours. According to theTimes, when Company Command asked Lt. Sam Nuxoll what he did most of the day, Nuxoll responded, "Making PowerPoint slides." He wasn't kidding.

    Some company leaders are reacting to this grumbling by trying to curtail its use. They're either stipulating no presentation decks -- period -- or limiting the number of slides allowed.

    A fine idea, says Warren Berger, design expert and author of Glimmer, but perhaps beside the point. The problem is not PowerPoint, or even how much time is spent preparing decks, but how it's used, Berger argues. The hardest thing with any presentation is looking your audience squarely in the face -- and that's precisely what presentation software allows people to avoid.

    "People are using PowerPoint as a way to limit their engagement with the audience. Whether they realize it or not, they're using it that way," Berger said when I reached him on the phone.

    According to Terri Sjodin, speaker and author of the forthcoming Small Message, Big Impact, people use PowerPoint because "it's the best, most socially acceptable crutch." No one aspires to deliver a boring presentation that's information-heavy but light on persuasion, she points out. But peer pressure and the age-old fear of public speaking tend to get the better of us.

    This points to an interesting possibility: that we resort to presentation software in the subconscious hope of deflecting the audience's scrutiny and judgment from us to our slides.

    "It takes people's eyes off of you," says Berger. "So you can basically be engaged with your slides instead of engaging with the audience. And similarly the audience can be engaged with the slides instead of you."

    Oddly enough, Richard Saul Wurman, originator of the TED conference -- definitely a culprit in popularizing the PowerPoint-backed speech -- insisted on doing away with speaker podiums precisely in order to intensify the uncomfortable feeling of having too much attention trained on you. (As he put it: "I wanted [the speaker] to feel more vulnerable.")

    For his part, Peter Arvai, CEO of Prezi, a recent challenger to PowerPoint's crown, is remarkably candid about presentation software's inability to fix poorly structured arguments. It was the developer's job to expand a software user's options. But persuasion, he emphasized, is a social problem. And "it's not our role to solve social problems," Arvai told me.