Issues in Vendor/Library Relations -- PP.

The article focuses on the criticisms made by Edward R. Tufte against the PowerPoint computer software. Tufte is a Yale emeritus professor who in retirement has become something of a cult figure through several books about analytical design published by his own Graphics Press. "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," the first of these, gave Tufte a platform which he uses to demonstrate how complicated phenomena can be beautifully and clearly presented. On his Website, Tufte offers for sale a 27-page booklet entitled "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint." In this essay, parts of which were published in "Wired" magazine, Tufte elaborates on what he considers the program's defects. Along the way, Tufte shows how decisions informed by PowerPoint presentations contributed to the 2003 space shuttle Columbia disaster, skewers a witless series of Harvard School of Public Health PowerPoint slide templates, compares PowerPoint to a drug meriting worldwide product recall, lavishes attention on a PowerPoint parody based on the "Gettysburg Address," displays a hilarious parody of his own, and in a brilliant mini-critique within his larger critique, refers to PowerPoint much of the time as "PP."