POWERPOINT
By: Jens Strandberg
Glasgow 2007
This essay concludes my research on PowerPoint that was carried out between 2005 and
2007. The work PowerPoint exists in four connected parts, a film, an essay, a lecture performance and an installation. I have tried to keep track on all reference and additional
readings however please e-mail me if you want to read the full transcript of the interview
with Terry Taylor from‘ ebible teachers’. My email address is Jens@1200m.org
The Frame of ‘PowerPoint’
My initial interest in PowerPoint began when my class and I, at Glasgow School of Art, were
invited up to ‘HMNB Navel base, at Faslane outside Glasgow, Scotland. Faslane navel base is
home to nuclear submarines and is the only one in Scotland.
The scenery at Faslane navel base is astonishing; it is situated on the shore of Loch Long, with
mountains diving down into the sea. We were given a, 30 minute long, PowerPoint presentation,
on why it’s important for Great Britain to remain armed with nuclear weapons, by a commander
Bill Jones. This was an enthusiastic presentation, with illustrations of submarines and detailed
descriptions of the facilities provided for the military. The culmination of the presentation
was the final slide, a black slide with a little icon for a multimedia clip. After stumbling for a
couple of minutes trying to show the multimedia file, Bill managed to make it work. The clip
showed a classic British comedy series, ‘Only fools and horses’, in which one of the characters
falls through an open bar. This multimedia clip had nothing to do with the previously shown
material, but it ended the presentation on a good note.
Theodor Adorno’s text ‘On Jazz’ (Über Jazz) from 1936, uses the discussion of Jazz music
to form the structure and basis for the text, which then elaborates debates that stretch far
outside the field of music. This text is my attempt, which is far less complex than Adorno’s, to
use PowerPoint as a point of departure, with the intention of generating a wider understanding
of PowerPoint, which is sometimes political, sometimes philosophical, within our world.
I have structured the essay in four interlinked parts, ‘History and Structure’, ‘Information,
knowledge, truth and beliefs’, ‘Targets and Bullet-Points in a small and large world’ and
‘PowerPoint software box 2003’. In the first part I will give a brief background of the software,
describe what it can do and acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages with the
fluctuated and invariable, structural, organizational system of a PowerPoint presentation.
The second part will try to generate a discussion around the purpose of a ‘PowerPoint’
presentation. What are the problems that we are confronted with when authorizing digital
information in an analogue format in the process of presenting and representing information
. This event took place at HMNB Navel base, at Faslane, January 2005.
in the production of knowledge? Is this process integrating with power production and in that
case, in what way does this happen? The third part of the text will focus on the vocabulary
that is implicated in the product and its imaginary politics, and lastly ‘PowerPoint software
box 2003’ is a continuation on the use of vocabulary that was shown in the third part. This last
part will also function as a kind of conclusion, but I hope instead of closing the discussion,
that it has a reverse affect.
History and Structure
“Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like
presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights.
The history of PowerPoint officially begins in 1987 when Bob Gaskins, the original designer of
PowerPoint completed the first version of the software, PowerPoint 1.0, for Apple users only.
1990 was the year when PowerPoint really hit the market, when it was upgraded to become an
integral part of ‘Microsoft Windows 3.0’ and fitted into the ‘Microsoft Office’ family, together
with computer programs such as ‘Word’, ‘Excel’, and in more recent times ‘Entourage’.
PowerPoint was originally designed for presentation in business contexts to ease
communication between departments within the company. Since then it has passed from
cooperatives to academic circles and lately to private and personal surroundings.
The most conventional form of making presentations in the pre-history of PowerPoint was
to use blackboards, 35 mm slides and/or Over Head Projectors (OHP) which enables you to
project text through transparent film onto to a screen OHP’s were developed in the 1940’s
but did not fully enter the business life until the mid 1970’s when it was made possible to
photocopy directly onto the transparent film. This allowed the speaker to combine text and
image in the presentation and ‘serve as a support, not a substitute for the speaker’.
PowerPoint is in simple terms a graphical presentation software program; you operate it with
a computer and it allows you to easily setup a digital slideshow. This slideshow is later used as
. Ian Parker, Absolute PowerPoint, The New Yorker, Annals of Business Section, May 28, 2001, p.
76, quoted from www.nbc-links.com/miscellaneous/AbsolutePPT.pdf p.1
. Apple Macintosh, also known as Mac is an alternative computer system to the PC system and
Microsoft Windows.
. This interdepartmental communication, was mainly due to a change in American cooperative
industry, see: Ian Parker, Absolute PowerPoint, Cit p. 4
. Ian Parker, Absolute PowerPoint, Cit p. 1
. JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski, The PowerPoint Presentation and Its Corollaries: How
Genres Shape Communicative Action in Organizations, MIT Sloan School of Mangement, Forthcoming in Mark Zachry and Charlotte Thralls (eds.) The Cultural Turn: Communicative Practices in
Workplaces and the Professions, Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing. Quoted from http://seeit.
mit.edu/Publications/YatesOrlikowski-PP.pdf p. 10
a presentation and it enables the speakers to illustrate ideas, pinpoint information, design,
organize and control their presentation, this with the help of photos, animations, clipart,
illustrations, text, sound and film.
The first version of PowerPoint (PowerPoint 1.0) allowed only black and white slide layout.
Certain transformations have happened within the application vocabulary since then. Words
such as, ‘auto-content wizard’, ‘templates’, ‘clipart’, ‘bullet points’ and ‘targets’, which
might be unfamiliar to a novice PowerPoint user, have been added. I shall later try to describe
what some of these words might mean and how we can read them. Other effects, designs
and styles have also been incorporated, making the program more polished and easier to
understand, with an ‘anyone can make a presentation’ approach. This should however not be
confused with the ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude, as that is somewhat contrary. DIY culture, which
is connected with the punk scenes of the 1980s, was an attempt to blur the line between the
creator and the consumer, as it constructed social networks that tied users and makers closer
together. This attitude to making music changed the aesthetic of making and consuming
music. Bands such as ‘Black Flag’ and the ‘Minutemen’ tried to establish new ways of thinking
where the aesthetics and success of music were measured differently or were considered less
vital. Instead the main focus was on the attitude of making it, makers became the music
and became more involved with every step of the process. This scene was diverted from the
established music industry, the point was to create an alternative to pre existent structures
that were already set out by the establishment. It is this distinction that is crucial, PowerPoint
allows ‘anyone’ to make a presentation, but only within the rules and limits set out by the
cooperative behind the product, that is Microsoft PowerPoint. Therefore it can be argued that
a PowerPoint creator has only a partial involvement in the creation of the presentation. The
real structure behind the content has already been set out by the cooperative organization.
The template ‘Auto-content wizard’, which comes with the product is a good example of
PowerPoint’s ‘anyone can make a presentation’ attitude. A shorthanded three step guide
allows the presenter to, in a quick and easy way, choose between the different options, lets
say, ‘communicating bad news’, fill out the way it will be presented, name it and PowerPoint
. This whole section draws from the definition of DIY taken on Wikipeadia, this is consciously
done, as the whole concept of Wikipeadia races the exact dilemma of the problem. As with Wikipeadia and web 2.0 in general you can participate in shaping the content but only in the already
established frame of the creators.
sets up the presentation automatically for you. There are of course different levels of how
much you participate in the production of your presentation, but the outcome stays the same;
you will have ‘your own’ presentation, but only in so far as it is permitted by the product.
The advantages of the aforementioned design elements are their ease of use. However this
functionality can conceal the way PowerPoint organizes and edits presentations. Ian Parker
highlights this in his text Absolute PowerPoint, 2001, when he says: ‘It helps you make a case,
but it also makes its own case: about how to organize, how to look at the world.’ What type of
information can be presented with PowerPoint and what organizational structure is this likely
to take?
A presentation with an OHP was before the advantages of PowerPoint not as rigid. An OHP
helped speakers to have an organized structure to their presentation, but the moment of
fluctuation between subject matters was easily achieved compared with PowerPoint. The
most functional structure you can have with PowerPoint is to have a fixed order with as little
flux as possible. A common presentation style is to have the first slide describing what is on
the agenda and to show the structure of the presentation, then to follow this structure in
as narrow and dogmatic way as possible. To reorganize slides during the talk is thus hard to
achieve, as everything is pre-decided and formatted in the computer, to reorganize visual
material during an OHP presentation is an easier task to accomplish, as the presenter has a
great overview, real time access and power over the visual material during the presentation.
I quote JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski’s text ‘The PowerPoint Presentation and Its
Corollaries: How Genres Shape Communicative Action in Organizations’:
‘PowerPoint slideshows are typically projected in a fixed order, making it more difficult
for the speaker to easily rearrange the slides during the presentation. This fact marks
an important distinction between the PowerPoint presentation and the presentation
made using overhead transparencies.’ Or in shorter terms, as design critic Edward Tufte puts it ‘relentless sequentially, one damn slide
after another.’
. JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski, The PowerPoint Presentation and Its Corollaries: How
Genres Shape Communicative Action in Organizations, Ibid p. 16
. Edward Tufte, quoted in JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski, The PowerPoint Presentation and
Its Corollaries: How Genres Shape Communicative Action in Organizations, Ibid p.18, in which they
PowerPoint makes the speaker structure and organize their presentation in a narrative way.
Its purpose to present information with very little flux between the slides and subjects, can
consequently suggest what type of information we present. The well-structured format that
a PowerPoint presentation creates, outlines the natural function of the information. How
should we then value information in a presentation? And what type of information is then
presented?
refers to p.118 in Edward Tufte’s book The Cognitive Style Of PowerPoint
Information, knowledge, truth and beliefs?
The intention of a presentation may vary, you may want to motivate people, perhaps teach,
or possibly convince someone of your argument. Whatever your reasons are, you are most
likely to deal with ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ in some way or another.
There are several understandings of the term ‘information’. We are faced with phrases
concerning information or ‘information society’ everyday in our western culture. It is therefore
hard to clarify the many meanings of the term, especially to differ it from ‘knowledge’. I
intend to, in a very simplified form, focus on some of the aspects that are relevant to my
reading of PowerPoint.
Knowledge is one of the major topics in philosophy, so I will here only attempt to give a brief
overview using the theorists: Gordon Graham and Paul Virilio’s work.
They have located some of the problematics of information in our ‘information society’ and
made important distinctions between digital and analogue information.
Before I begin this discussion, I would like to stress another vital phenomena of information
and knowledge. Our culture is exposed to information all the time.10 Information is displayed
to us through 24-hour news channels in cafes, background radio at work or the Internet. This
type of information is a kind of passive information, it is there whether we want it or not ‘we
know something if, and after, we been acted upon by the external world.’11 This is a type of
over exposed information, which has the effect of making us passive, we do not think while
consuming it.
If we instead view knowing as something active rather than passive, then the production of
knowledge comes through coaching, as we get instructions but actively have to seek for the
information. 12
10. This whole section is refers to the passage on the library in Gordon Graham’s book The Institution of the Intellectual Values, IA-Imprint Academic publishing, 2005, pp.202-204
11. Gordon Grahm, The Institution of Intellectual Values, Ibid p.203
12. Gordon Grahm, The Institution of Intellectual Values, Ibid p.204, ’If we, on the contrary, knowing as active, what the student or other library user requires is coaching and instructions in the
skills of acquiring and reproducing genuine knowledge.’
‘Passive’ and ‘active’ information differ also in their display, the main form of divergence
being the aesthetic of speed, associated with the passive consumption of information. Active
knowledge has most of the time a slow display and can particularly be found in analogue
formats such as books, libraries and dictionaries. This information exists when we act on it.
This form of information and knowledge has positive implications and is seen as something of
great value. This might be because of the clear source of authors. I can speak, seek and refer
to this information, as it has a slow speed and is unlikely to change or fade away.
‘Active’ information is especially rooted in digital formats. Giving the word ‘information’ more
negative connotation. Active information ‘acts upon’ us with rapid speed and is in constant
flux. The effects of this seem to be that we are not psychologically able to cope with its speed,
it simply moves too fast,13 ‘it becomes bombs ‘information bombs,’ which explode in people’s
minds.’14 The Internet is perhaps the best example of a place where ‘active information’ is
likely to appear and be stored; it stores a whole spectrum of information and reliable and
unreliable sources coexist. The Internet has a huge storage capacity, which brings with it a
risk of storing misinformation. This might be because it is widely accessible in our western
culture and users can easy add content.
An excellent example of this is the evolving encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is a continuously
changing online resource. With Wikipedia ‘definitions’ can be re-edited and re-presented. If
I am unsatisfied with the definition of ‘Apple’, being a tree with its pomaceous fruit, of the
species Malus domestica. I can change it to ‘A tree with a green and red fruit shaped as a ball’
or whatever else I desire.
Virilio recognizes yet another outcome of the problematics of information speed in his book
‘The Information Bomb’. He highlights the fact that digital information moves at such a rapid
speed that it deprive the subject of content. ‘I am capable of reducing the most complex
situation to its simplest expression’.15 In short this is the ‘essence’ of digital information
13. This is highlighted by Slavoj Zizek in his speech for Documenta 11, 2001 the whole speech can
be seen on: http://www.documenta12.de/archiv/d11/data/english/platform1/index.html It is
also published in The Universal Exception, Continuum Books, 2006, the part I use here is especially
taken from p.252 in this text. Paul Virilio makes a similar point in Ground Zero, Versus, 2002.
14. Paul Virilio Ground Zero Ibid, p.22
15
George Soros quoted in, The Information Bomb, Verso Books, 2000, p. 72
and its result is a reduction of information in the content. This point, where information is
condensed, is also a point which Edward Tufte highlights in his analysis of the Columbia space
shuttle accident.
In January 2003, 82 seconds after lift-off, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the
liquid fuel tank of the Columbia space shuttle and hit its left wing. The consequences were
dreadful and the crew were forced to circle the Earth for two weeks unaware of their destiny.
NASA made several investigations to evaluate the accident and it is these investigations
which Tufte criticizes in his book. Most of the engineering presentations done for NASA are
done with PowerPoint, which was also the case in this instance. Tufte argues that this was
a contributing factor in the outcome of the accident. His analysis of the PowerPoint slides
that were presented by the investigation board points out the problems associated with
PowerPoint and digital information.
The slides that were presented were compressed linguistics and information in order to be able
to fit the ‘PowerPoint style.’16 You cannot write long complicated technical investigations on
PowerPoint slides, it will simply never fit. You are instead forced to write acronyms and short
‘bullet points.’17 It is in these bullet points that a lot of information disappears. Advanced
‘rocket science’ was simply reduced to bullet-points. Tufte also criticized the optimistic
tone that the slides were written in. These in combination gave a false understanding of the
seriousness of the problems and caused a horrifying result when the Colombia spaceflight
burned up in their attempt to re-enter the atmosphere of the Earth. We should perhaps here
remember the motto set by the NASA administration just a few years earlier: ‘Faster, Smaller,
Cheaper.’18
These are some examples of the vital points in which ‘digital’ diverges from analogue; it lacks
16. What I mean with ‘PowerPoint style’ is, to be able to fit as much information as possible, in the
shortest way you can, with as little slides as possible.
17. A ‘Bullet-point’ is a way of organizing a PowerPoint slide and looks like a bigger black dot,
after the dot is a compressed sentence written. ‘Bullet point’ will be explained later in the text
‘Targets and Bullet Points within a hard and soft world’.
18. A lot of texts have been written about this, visit NASA webpage www.nasa.gov for more information. I found out about this policy through reading The Information Bomb by Paul Virilio, Cit, p.
66
an identifiable source/author, moves with a greater speed, which reduces its content and is
always in formation.19
This discussion of the authority and reliability within digital information as compared to
analogue information will have to change when it is applied to PowerPoint, as the presence
of the presenter contributes an element of authority to the source. To present and re-present
information within a combined digital and analogue format shapes the authority and source
of the information, it gives authority to non-authorized information and a factor of ‘truth’.
This truth factor is an embodiment of digital information, which is, as I have mentioned
earlier, likely to hold ‘misinformation’.
Is the event20 that PowerPoint creates, where the presenter authorizes information, an attempt
to de-digitalize digital information, and consequently materialize digital information so
that it becomes truth? As Lyotard argues, realism shows us an image of the world that we
might already be familiar with, hence diminishing any doubts that we may have. In doing so
it corroborates our ‘status as knowing subjects’ by verifying the picture as true. Does not the
realization of being also in itself belong to a wholly different dimension?21
The PowerPoint presentation underlines authority and consequently generates powerrelations, in the form of a hierarchy between presenter and audience, which are similar to the
hierarchies between the reader and author.22 And one of mankind’s biggest power relations
is to God, the all mighty, who we commit our beliefs to obey in order to get to ‘Heaven’. It is
then not so surprising that one of the most frequent users of PowerPoint are churches and
preachers23 (mainly in the context of American churches).
19. The text ‘Information is always in-formation’ was displayed in the ‘World-Information’ exhibition in Bangalore 2005. It was a contribution of the Vienna based artist ‘Elfride’.
20. Event is here understood through the theory of Alain Baudiou.
21. Cathrine Belsey, Poststructuralism, A very Short Introduction, Oxfort University Press, 2002,
p. 102 and/or Slavoj Zizek, Psychoanalysis and Post-Marxism, in the case of Alain Baudiou, 1998,
http://www.lacan.com/zizek-badiou.htm
22. This is a classical Poststructuralist debate, described by Roland Barthes in, The Death of the
Author, and Michael Foucault, What is an Author, 1969, Published in, Art in Theory 1900-2000 An
Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, pp. 949-953
23. There is lots of material written on PowerPoint in churches, most of these texts is to be found
online and to view some examples of how different PowerPoint presentations for churches might
look like please visit, www.ebibleteacher.com, http://www.powerpointsermons.com, www.poin-
I have been e-mailing with Terry Taylor on Ebibleteacher24 about his experiences with using
PowerPoint in churches. Terry is in the forefront of involving PowerPoint with Christians
beliefs; he is one of the few who have been using PowerPoint in his practice since 1995 and
has witnessed a rapidly growing popularity of PowerPoint in American Christian culture. His
webpage www.ebibleteacher.com has 10.000 visitors a day, but is run as a home business, his
regular day job is in ‘non-religious computer work’.
Terry Taylor helped me by explaining that the most common way of using PowerPoint in
churches is to make announcements or inform about special events. His response to using
PowerPoint has been predominantly positive and estimates that over 90% of churches with
over 1000 members in local congregations use PowerPoint in some way or another. PowerPoint
started to become popular in churches for showing photos at funerals and weddings, but has
since then been replaced by specialized religious software that makes slideshows that can
be given to the families after the ceremony. The ‘Worship software’25 is one of these types
of software, it is especially designed to enhance the speaker’s flexibility in his sermons and
provide greater possibilities to incorporate video.
There is a crucial difference when using PowerPoint in churches in contrast to other, perhaps
more ‘normal’ presentation settings, as the listeners have voluntarily joined the sermon.
This is a fundamental difference from business presentations, where the presenter seeks the
audience. ‘It helps that the church audience are very interested in the subject’26’, says Terry but
also recognizes that the key issue is the loyalty of the people who prepare the presentations.
‘PowerPoint presentations are the key “art” expressions of church members’27 and many of
the presentations that are made, are made by people who also do business presentations.
The key difference, according to Terry, is that in business they are motivated by financial
demand but in church it is an expression of their devotion to God. It is thus, according to
Terry, ‘not a matter of needing to be less convincing. The conviction of the preparer causes
them to always do their best.’28
tofpower.com or www.churchmedia.net
24. For a short resume of Terry Taylor visit www.ebibleteacher.com/author.html
25. For more information about the Worship software, please visit http://www.ebibleteacher.
com/worshipsoftware.html or www.easyworship.com
26. Terry Taylor in conversation with writer.
27. Terry Taylor in conversation with writer.
28. Terry Taylor in conversation with writer.
Terry also recognizes great risks in using PowerPoint, especially among the older generation
who are likely to connect video projection with entertainment movies and secularism. There
is also always a potential problem in that people might associate PowerPoint with their work
and this is why Terry generally discourages people from using examples of PowerPoint images
that come with the product, as these are often seen at work. ‘We don’t want people to feel
like they are at work when they are at church’29 and continues to explain that PowerPoint is
there to help to set the mood.
‘In the past, churches used art and color to create mood. Some have said today
that the use of PowerPoint and video projectors is the modern equivalent of stained
glass. Stained glass images are used fairly limited in the United States. The use of
video stills and moving images is our “Stained Glass”.’30
Can PowerPoint then be an attempt to reauthorize people’s post-Nietzsche beliefs with an
updated version of ‘stained glass’ in order to authorize the content of the Bible and truths
of our being? By visualizing beliefs of information in PowerPoint format, may this wholly
different dimension, mentioned earlier, be a holy digital dimension?
Shall we then view the presenter as the preacher? Or as the presenter of the other,31 the
big other, with an attempt to get closer to God? By embodying the role of the preacher, the
provider of information, knowledge and ultimately power, the deliverer of truth with a digital
dimension.
The authority of a PowerPoint presentation event can also be turned around, not only is the
presenter giving authority/power to the digital information. The digital information is also
empowering the presenter. Gordon Graham also recognizes this, ‘The power that technology
lends the “information”, produces an important air of authority.’32 Perhaps this is because
of its fixed order of organization and its formal aesthetics that were emphasized in the first
part of this text.
29.
30.
31.
36
32.
Terry Taylor in conversation with writer.
Terry Taylor in conversation with writer.
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Pshycho-Analysis, Penguin books, 1987, p.
Gordon Graham, The Institution of Intellectual Values, Cit, p. 199
As a little test I made a presentation to my class about a year ago, where the end slide
said ‘Soviet was a great place in Stalin times’, when people disagreed with me I realized; by
presenting ‘un-true’ information in PowerPoint form that digital information is likely to have
a life of its own. The slide provoked a debate, in which I, the presenter and in this case the
case-maker, changed my mind. The technology however stayed the same through out the
discussion that followed and the original PowerPoint slide was the one that had the last word
in the debate, which obviously brought it back to the starting point.
To have a strong narrative and an author of information, can make digital information into
truth, we believe in what we see, even though it is likely to have some ‘misinformation’. This is
where digital information becomes knowledge, and as Francis Bacon’s slogan or shall we say
bullet point tells us, ‘Knowledge is itself Power’. This is more than true, the information in a
PowerPoint presentation is true, even though the information might be misinformation.
‘Targets’ and ‘Bullet-points’ in a small and large world.
As I said earlier, when I briefly gave a background description of the software, PowerPoint
features a whole set of words that might be unfamiliar to the first time user of PowerPoint.
‘Targets’ is an example of a word that frequently comes up when dealing with PowerPoint. The
‘target’ is who the information in the presentation will hit and which format it will take, if it
will be downloadable from the Internet, presented more classically, or shown as an animation.
In the Microsoft help guide for PowerPoint one can read the following text:
Define the purpose of your presentation as it relates to the outcome you seek. Is your
intention to inform? Persuade? Motivate? Teach? When you clarify your purpose,
you will more easily hit your target.33
So, as the text reveals when we talk about ‘targets’ in PowerPoint we are looking at; what
the goal of the presentation is? Who is it for? What is the purpose of it? The language that
PowerPoint decides to represent this process with is ‘war’ vocabulary. You will, by following
PowerPoint’s helpful guide ‘easily hit your target’.
Another feature of a PowerPoint presentation are ‘bullet points’, although some presenters
decide to write out a whole sentence which defeats the entire purpose of bullet points, which
is to communicate the key point only. There are many guidelines for how to use ‘bullet points’
in the most successful way; David Paradi carefully describes his ‘6 by 6’ guidelines in his
text on ‘How to Write Powerful Bullet Points’ 200334. The 6 by 6 guidelines state that you are
likely to have a successful presentation if you have ‘no more than six bullet points’ per slide
‘and each bullet point should aim to have no more than six words.’ David Paradi refers to
himself on his website as a ‘PowerPoint lifeguard’ and gives tips on how to avoid ‘the death
of PowerPoint’. 35
33. Presentation tips from Dale Carnegie Training, taken from Microsoft ‘POWERPOINT:mac v.X’
help guide.
34. David Paradi, it co-author of, Guide to PowerPoint, Prentice Hall, 2006, the text I refer to here
is found online http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/articles/write_powerful_bullets.htm
35. For more reading of David Paradi http://www.presentersuniversity.com/store_powerpoint_
books.php his ideas has also been featured by Microsoft, Canadian business magazine, BuisnessWorld India and Derek Book Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University.
The language that I have re-presented here is much more harmful than ‘PowerPoint’ tries
to suggest. ‘Bullet points’ function and ‘targets’ are of course in a non-virtual world also
closely linked to weapons, wars and how we handle conflict; the irony of David Paradi’s selftitled claim of being ‘PowerPoint lifeguard’ is fully justified. The tricks he teaches are how to
avoid the death of PowerPoint by carefully guiding you on how to construct short and powerful
‘bullet points’. Are these not, together with realizing your targets, also careful advice on how
to survive in our society?
Address the right people, keep your thoughts short, quick and concise, and if you do everything
right you will end up with the power through the process. This is reminiscent of the training of
Bill Clinton for his second election campaign. He was trained to speak as fast as possible to
obey the strict American television rules. Using this technique he was able to say everything
about a theme in less than ninety seconds.36
This is of course the same in any advertising campaign, which is likely to set out the line for
‘successful living’, to recall an advertisement by the clothing brand ‘Diesel’.
We need to here consider what Microsoft PowerPoint initially stands for, as the symbol of
Microsoft PowerPoint is more than software. Microsoft PowerPoint stands for capitalism
(global), cooperative dream, American dream, America, technology and Bill Gates (who
himself is a product) .37
If we start looking at PowerPoint as a symbol of global capitalism, in ‘post cold-war’ society,
it can be viewed as a castle built on immaterial information and armed with ‘bullet-points’
against ‘targets’. November 1989 marked the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of communism
and the victory of the ‘free west’, only months later PowerPoint was released as part of
‘Microsoft Office’ a widely celebrated success. If the fall of the Berlin wall marked the victory
of capitalism and the free west, does not PowerPoint’s global success at the same time, also
indicate where power is placed. PowerPoint is where political power in post cold war times is
placed, i.e. true power resides in multinational organizations, government etc.
36. Paul Virilio, The information Bomb, Verso, 2000, p. 75
37. Slavoj Zizek, The Universial Exception, Continuum, 2006, The Three Faces of Bill Gates pp. 227236
Even though the ‘real’ cold war was a war of negotiations and espionage it was also, as
Barthes carefully describes, but does not directly state in Mythologies,38 heavily armed with
infiltration of cooperative weapons.39 Cooperative weapons are everyday mythologies, in the
way that they are there to establish an alternative semiological system, where the original
understanding of the sign becomes a prefiguration of a new mythologized understanding.
This erases the sign’s original meaning and covers it up with new second order meanings.
These companies provide us with the linguistic weapon terminology of a virtual world. This
technology has now provided us with ‘real’ virtual weapons, where the reality of a war and the
reality of war-computer games seem inseparable.
There was an extraordinary piece of news in August 200340 when an interesting product came
within the ‘firing line’ of many debates in newspapers. The product was a new released video
game called Kumawar from Kumarealitygames.41 This game made, in my opinion, Martha
Rosler’s updated version of ‘Bringing the War Home’42 (2004) feel futile. Kumawar is a 3d
war game that is operated from a ‘Third-person shooter’ (TPS) perspective. A player gets
missions briefed to them by military experts news-show style, about a mission they need to
accomplish. Theses missions are located in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the player controlling
the American soldiers.
Examples of missions can be to find Uday and Qusay, (‘Uday and Qusay’s last stand’, is by the
way the first mission that you need to accomplish.) Other missions are ‘Freedom heroes, the
road to Baghdad’ or ‘Operation: Red Dawn’ which was a recognition of the launch of Saddam
Hussein’s trial for Crimes Against Humanity. The concept of the game is to fight the war on
global terrorism from the ‘living room’ sofa. The missions are recreated with great detail and
can illustrate battles that are only a couple of months old (it is then perhaps not so surprising
38. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Vintage, 2000
39. Roland Barthes is describing in Mythologies, Ibid, the language of contemporary myths.
40. Dominic Timms reported about this in The Guardian, August 15, 2003, Iraq War game comes
under fire.
41. www.kumarealitygames.com
42. This project is a photo project originally produced in the 60’s to commentate the media coverage of the Vietnam War. The work that I am referring to here is the updated version of this project,
which was realized by Martha Rosler in 2004 about the Iraq war.
that military commanders refer to wars as war-games). These principles of fighting seem
also applicable in real war. The term ‘war games’ was frequently used during the PowerPoint
presentation I attended at Faslane Naval base, which I described in my introduction.
Also of relevance to this discussions is a crucial PowerPoint event that led up to the Iraq
war, when Colin Powell in Feburary 2003 gave a briefing, justifying the war on Iraq to the UN
Security Council.43 This (in)-famous PowerPoint presentation is filled with pictures, which,
according to Powell, demonstrated the indispensable need to invade Iraq. Dialogues had
been recorded and were presented alongside air photos of various vehicles coming and going,
in an attempt, if we believe Powell, to remove proof of weapons of mass destruction and
consequently cover up for the UN inspectors. However, another thing that was covered up
for the UN faculty this day was the large reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ that was
hung on the wall behind Powell’s podium. This painting commemorates the catastrophic deed
of the German aerial bombing of the Spanish city Guernica, during the civil war; it was hung
on the wall behind the speaker’s podium, as a reminder of the horror of wars. The covering
up of the ‘Guernica’ was officially claimed to be because of that the painting’s black, white
and grey confused the television cameras.44 However was this not a covering up of the real
intention of the presentation? Is it not likely that the ‘Guernica’ would remind the audience of
the real repercussions of Powell’s PowerPoint presentation? Where ‘bullet points’ and ‘targets’
of PowerPoint become more real than Microsoft’s apparently innocent considerations. These
‘targets’ and ‘bullet point’ are more true then imagined, the war game that was described
earlier, has a real life counterpoint in contemporary weapon technology. There is here no man
to man battle, no ‘reality’, just an operator 1000 miles away from its target in front of a
screen firing missiles.
Is this ‘reality’, not a reality ‘deprived of its substance’45 a virtual reality? A war without
43. To see pictures from the presentation and read the scripted version of Colin Powell’s speech,
visit: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030205-powell-un17300pf.htm
44. Peter Conrad, A scream we can’t ignore, The Obsserver, October 3, 2004.
45. Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Dessert of the Real, Verso Books, 2002, p. 37. However, this is a
quite common statement by Slavoj Zizek and The Universal Exception p. 243 is another example of
the similar theses.
combat and politics without extremes46, reality ‘deprived of its substance’ maps out the
agenda of western capitalism. Advertisements with removed essence, McDonald’s ‘I’m loving
it’ campaign provides the signs for a lifestyle and not the product, as is the case with the
Diesel campaign mentioned earlier. And it is exactly this culture ‘We do not promote products,
we create behavior,’47 that PowerPoint has arisen from. This is pointed out by Cliff Nass in,
Absolute PowerPoint, ‘Companies weren’t discovering things in the laboratory and then trying
to convince consumers to buy them. They were discovering—or creating—consumer demand,
figuring out what they can convince consumers they need, then going to the laboratory and
saying, ‘Build this!’ 48 Or with other words to recall an earlier quotation ‘it, (PowerPoint) helps
you to make a case’49 even if there is no case.
The ‘target’ (archiving) of most PowerPoint presentations is the Internet. Many PowerPoint
presentations are downloadable, in various formats, as PowerPoint files (.ppt), as PDF files,
as animations and so on. The targeting and archiving process of these presentations is what
we will leave behind us for further teaching, debates or discussions. Boris Groys recognizes in
his essay ‘What Carries the Archive and for How Long’50 that the decision of what to archive is
a question of power. It is an act of deciding what is important and what is not. Within digital
devices this is less of an issue than within analogue because of the immeasurable limits of
storage space that digital devices provide. It also has a setting of how that information can
be archived, the painting of ‘Mona Lisa’ by Leonardo Da Vinci can only be archived in the form
of a picture of the painting. It is only possible to archive the actual physical painting itself
in analogue format. This is a key point that we need to emphasise. The archiving of digital
information is condensed in a manner comparable to that found in the increasingly popular
online poker games. These online poker games are an act deprived of their performance (the
ever so important nervous facial expressions and other give away signs of a weak or strong
46. Chantal Mouffe, argued in the seminar The Public in Question (Academy of Fine Art in Vienna
2005) that I attended, that politics without extremes is the biggest threat to politics.
47. Paul Virilio, Ground Zero, Verso books, 2002, p. 28
48. Cliff Nass who teaches in the ‘Department of Communication’ at Stanford, quoted in Ian
Parker’s text Absolute PowerPoint, The New Yorker, Annals of Business Section, May 28, 2001, p. 76,
quoted from www.nbc-links.com/miscellaneous/AbsolutePPT.pdf,
49. Ian Parker, Absolute PowerPoint, Ibid.
50. This text was originally published as part of Boris Groys, Die Einfürung, from the title Unter
Verdacht, Carl Hanser Verlag München Wien, 2000. I have been reading it from, Information is Alive,
Art and Theory on Archiving and Retrieving Data, Nai Publishers 2003, pp. 179-193
hand are invisible, players have to instead rely on luck or chance). Similarly, what we tend to
archive when archiving PowerPoint presentations is a skeleton of bullet points. The content,
the real event is absent and the acts of a physical are in most cases removed (with the few
exceptions of video footage, that can sometimes be found). The associated problems of this
approach are obvious. In the case that I mentioned earlier, (my little test on my class) the
presentation will most likely have a life on its own, as the PowerPoint presentation is archived
without the body and discussion that followed. We are hence reducing important parts (the,
event, act etc…) to ‘nothing’ -in order to fit it within the limits of digital archiving.
And this brings me to my last point, PowerPoint.
PowerPoint software box 2003.
The most common way of showing your PowerPoint presentation is with the help of a digital
projector. Connecting the digital projector to a computer allow you to project and navigate
the slideshow from the computer. This situation transpires to many different environments.
The most common premise to show PowerPoint is the business conference rooms or lecture
theaters. What PowerPoint does, which has been discussed through out the essay is to help
you to project power and authority on to certain information and arguments that you want to
highlight. It is perhaps then not so surprising that a ‘power projection’ in a non-virtual world
is also a common strategy of military forces.
The American based webpage Globalsecurity.org is, if we believe them, one of the leading forces
to provide background information in the field of defense, space, intelligence, Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMD), and homeland security. The idea of Globalsecurity.org was founded
in Washington, 2000 and has since then rapidly grown as an authoritative online information
page for those in need of a trusted ‘objective’ source of military information. ‘Everyone is
entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. We try to bring you the facts, to help you
form your opinion.’51 On this webpage one can read about what ‘power projection’ or ‘force
projection’, which it is also known as, are. The concept of projecting power was established as
a result of the cold war. This type of new military strategy was to function as an accelerated
process for military change, with more flexibility and selective engagement in conflicts, or
in their language ‘theaters’. The Idea behind it was to boost and retain the ‘enlargement of
the community of free market democracy’.52 A ‘power projection’ is to increase or project
power force, economic, diplomatic, informational or military, to these types of ‘theaters’. A
theater is not necessarily in the state of a war, some theaters are in conflict and the function
of ‘power projection’ to these areas is to maintain peace.
On the cover of the software box to Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 one can see a computerized
illustration of a projector that looks almost like a photograph. The projector is projecting
towards you through the logo of Microsoft. You are in the light of the projector and the
51. http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/overview/mission.htm
52. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-10-1/ch1.htm
metaphorical image of this, is that Microsoft PowerPoint empowers you, as the light from the
projector is focused on you. But it is a projection of power through the logo of a multinational
organization. The ‘subject’ is therefore empowered through the established settings of the
‘agency’, that is through Microsoft PowerPoint. Therefore the power is a projection over you
and not with you.
What effects does this have on the shaping of our knowledge and our society? Is globalsecurity.
org with their statement ‘knowledge is often power’53 not the illustration of the bridge between
the lecture and war ‘theater’? And is ‘power is knowledge’ not what Foucault proclaimed in his
latter writings?54
Foucault located a complex split between two different definitions of power.55 In his earlier
writings Foucault maintained a classical understanding of power, power as the force which
lays the law, this brought with it a great deal of negative understandings; rejection, exclusion,
repression and so on. ‘Power not only reach into the most intimate spaces of the subject, but
actually produces what we call subjects.56 Foucault’s later project on power was a positive
understanding of power, the power of resistance the power of knowledge etc. The problem
was then, how could power create both the subject and at the same time a self authorized
resistance by the subject? This lead Foucault to compose an incomplete analysis of the
creation of a subject. It might be as a result of his initial point of the ‘subject’, the common
Poststructuralist proclamation; that there is no solution to the problematic of the subject, as
it has no substantial identity.57
Alain Badiou offers a more complete analysis of the subject.58 He acknowledges that
53. http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/overview/mission.htm
54. Micheal Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews & Other Writings 19772-1977, Pantheon books, 1980, p 59
55. This part draws on the problematic that Foucault himself recognizes in, Power/Knowledge,
Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977, 1980, Ibid, It is also something which Oliver
Feltham and Justin Clemens sketches out in their essay in, Infinite Thought, Truth and the Return to
Philosophy, Continuum books, 2005, pp. 3-5.
56. Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens essay in, Infinite Thought, Truth and the Return to Philosophy, 2005, Ibid, p. 4 Commenting on Foucault’s power problematic.
57. Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens essay in, Infinite Thought, Truth and the Return to Philosophy, 2005, Ibid p. 3
58. Alain Badiou, www.lacan.com/badioulecture see also Alain Badiou, Infinite thought, truth and
Poststructuralists have overlooked ‘the ontology of the subject’ and does, in comparison to
Poststructuralist thinkers, not merge, the debate of the ‘subjects’, ‘identity’ and ‘agency’
together.59 ‘Something of an ‘event’ and something of the world’ forms the ‘subject’.60 This
something is a ‘trace’ of an event, a ‘trace’ is what is left of the event and the subject appears
through recognition and commitment to this ‘trace’ of the event.
What I have been trying to show through this essay is how power relations emerge through
‘events’ in our society. I have also tried to show how the authorization of information can
blur the content. In the first part I demonstrated how PowerPoint structures information in
a conductive way. I demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages with this structuring
system. I also highlighted that narrated structures make fluctuation in the presentation
harder to achive, which is a vital part for many presenters. It consequently also meant that
the information presented with PowerPoint appeared more trustworthy. In the second part I
showed the dangerous of making unreliable information appear reliable. I also highlighted
the problems and differences of digital and analogue information. In the third and the last
part I have conducted an argument on the linguistics that are used by PowerPoint. By using
the material from the previous parts I have carried out a reading of how digital and analogue
information and words are constructed and constructing our society. I have throughout this
part used sources with mixed authority; web pages, real events, and theory were blended
together, in order to show how PowerPoint acts as an extension and symbol of our culture, in
the formation of our society.
Here I come back to commander Bill Jones who ended his presentation on Nuclear weapons,
with a clip from ‘Only Fools and Horses’, which I mentioned in the introduction. The clip bore
no relevance to the talk but by being the last impression, became the lasting trace. The
crucial point with this is that, this is just how PowerPoint works. It is not a matter of what you
present, it is more a matter of how you do it. PowerPoint allows you to do it in the way that
you can, if you want, distract the subject matter to the extent, that you can say everything
without saying anything at all.
the return to philosophy, 2005, Ibid
59. Alain Badiou, Infinite thought and the return of philosophy, 2005, Ibid, p.4
60. Alain Badiou, www.lacan.com/badioulecture
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Microsoft PowerPoint, Helpguide for PowerPoint:mac v.X, published 2001
Mouffe Chantal, Documenta 11, platform 1, published by: Hatje Cantz publisser, 2002
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Web material of different relevance.
www.ebibleteacher.com
www.churchmedia.net
www.globalsecurity.org
www.kumarealitygames.com
www.nasa.gov
www.norvig.com
www.powerpointsermons.com,
www.pointofpower.com
Audio/video lectures.
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documenta12.de/archiv/d11/data/english/platform1/index.html
Badiou Alain, The Subject of Art, Deitch Projects, 04.01.2005, Published at: http://www.lacan.com/
badioulecture.html