It's Not Just Powerpoint That's Bad

Its Not Just PowerPoint

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is a saying we are all too familiar with. High school students is it to argue to their teachers why the page consisting of no more than a large picture should count as part of a page requirement. It seems that that very statement has somehow integrated itself in to the very fabric of our minds right into what we define as content. There was a time when pictures, visuals, design was supplementary. These elements were used to reinforce the clear, logical, persuasive point that the content had already provided. Somehow, over the last couple decades this has changed. Images and design have become the content. While PowerPoint is a major contributor to this “disaster” I don’t think it is to blame.

As technology progresses, particularly in computing, many “skills” are made available to the public that initially might have required a degree. As we’ve seen in class, software such as Google Sketchup allows anyone computer savvy to build intricate 3d models in a relatively short amount of time. The right (or wrong person) may even be crafty enough with the software to fool someone into believing that their amateur sketchup model is a genuine architectural design. One the surface, it may be, but one must agree that probably lacks many of the underlying principles and concepts that are acquired in a four year program.

My example may be an extreme case but essentially that is what is happening in the realm of creating good content. Take a more realistic example, websites. In the past websites required highly competent computer programmers. They developed content and then as technology progressed they developed ways to make it visually appealing and thus adding additional value to it. Now however through the use of tools such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editors anyone with a computer