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> It's not the tool that's the problem. It's how it's used.
A medium does have certain tendencies, regardless of the skill of its user. For
example, film is well suited for overviews and concrete information, but poorly
suited for detailed or abstract information (imagine trying to explain
mathematical formulae on video, for instance). By contrast, printed text is
almost the exact opposite of film. Skilled users can overcome these built-in
limitation, often by mixing media, but usually have to struggle to do so. Less
skilled users tend to have their points overwhelmed by the medium.
As for a slide presentation, I suggest that its tendency is to break
information into small chunks, with only minimal continuity. The presentation
proceeds one slide at a time, and, although it's possible to flip back and
forth, doing so tends to disrupt the presentation. Similarly, although people
may present more bullet points than can fit on to a slide, the tendency is to
struggle to make the points fit on a single slide rather than to use two. Nor
do you often see a sentence straddling two slides.
Also, while a transition can guide how an audience interprets a film, or even a
novel, it's hard to imagine how slide transitions could be used with the same
effectiveness. Almost always, transitions in a slide show are simply a
stylistic choice that could be changed without affecting how the information is
presented. This limitation alone makes slide presentations a far less rich
medium than film, or even a printed page.
There would be nothing wrong with slide presentations if they were only one of
a number of possible media. The problem is that they are often the only medium
used in business, and at times they are not especially well-suited to the type
of information that needs to be conveyed.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604-421.7177
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