In 1987, Forethought, a prophetically named software company in Silicon Valley, developed the visual presentation program PowerPoint for the Macintosh Operation System. Within a few months the new program was purchased by Microsoft as its first major acquisition.
Microsoft soon expanded the program to work with Windows systems as well as Macs, and then bundled it into the Microsoft Office suite that would essentially take over the world of business software. Since the late 1990s, PowerPoint's market share of the presentation market has consistently been estimated at about 95 percent.
I'm sure many people love it, and apologies to them, but from the first I have absolutely hated PowerPoint, finding it at best confusing and often downright unintelligible. What clearly must make sense to many other people makes no sense at all to me.
The logic that lies behind PowerPoint reflects the code that the brains of most people in business easily comprehend. I suppose it plays for them like music, though perhaps, from my perspective, that would be the genre of modern jazz that sounds like an inchoate traffic jam.
My hate for the software peaked while working in middle management at one leading technology company where the entire communication culture -- the entire corporate purpose -- seemed to hinge on PowerPoint. The large unit I managed worked for weeks on a presentation explaining what exactly it was that we were supposed to be doing and why.
Once my team determined it was ready, we forwarded the presentation to upper management, where it was discussed at length before being sent back to us for revisions. We would then produce a new round of PowerPoints with adjustments here and adjustments there before sending the revised deck back upstairs.
This went on for many months. The ultimate goal, apparently, was for our PowerPoint to be presented to the board of directors, a body composed entirely of men who lived far from where our company was headquartered and who reigned like distant gods over the entire enterprise.
Gradually, it occurred to me we were caught in some sort of invisible elevator a la Groundhog Day, going up, going down but we were never going to find true love, let alone board approval for our presentation. It was about this point that I realized the reason nobody could ever agree on the PowerPoint presentation was that we actually had no clear idea who were were at that company or why we even existed.
We were spending millions of dollars going nowhere.
The enterprise been two separate tech companies before being mushed together by some of the leading technology venture capitalists, who made off like thieves. Those of us who worked there, though generously compensated, quite simply would never be able to create a viable presentation of the un-presentable.
Inevitably the company spiraled into bankruptcy, which at the time was front-page news in the Wall Street Journal.
By then my loathing for PowerPoint was complete. I decided to rationalize my incompetence by declaring to myself *it* was flawed as opposed to the alternative possibility. For whatever queer set of peculiarities, my particular brain does not process information in that format. And in a pinch, I'll stick with my brain, even in its post-stroke condition.
To this day, when I sit through a PowerPoint, all those beautiful slides with bullet points simply fade into the background as the presenter drones on and on, and my mind floats away to a distant place. Every now and again, I jerk awake, remember where I am, and beg the universe:
Please just tell me a story!
POSTSCRIPT: Years after the company I described above went bankrupt and disappeared from the NYSE, I visited Japan only to discover that a Japanese subsidiary of the firm was still very much in operation. They used the same logo we had popularized before our demise and probably were still searching for *their* identity.
I'm guessing that they just never got our final PowerPoint. The one that said "Sayōnara."
***
The News:
* Shootings never stopped during the pandemic: 2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades (WaPo)
* Biden Seeks Assault Weapons Ban and Background Checks (NYT)
* Suspect in Boulder shooting had previously alarmed classmates with violent outbursts (WaPo)
* Colorado suspect got assault weapon 6 days before shooting (AP)
* These killings can happen because the U.S. celebrates the sale of weapons made for war (Editorial Board/WaPo)
* The United States expects the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the origins of the novel coronavirus pandemic to require further study, perhaps including a return visit to China, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday. (Reuters)
* A new and potentially troublesome variant of the coronavirus has been detected in India, as have variants first detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil. (AP)
* A giant container ship called Ever Given has gotten stuck lengthways in the Suez Canal, causing a massive traffic jam in one of the world's busiest waterways. The stuck ship is as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Oil prices are already rising. [HuffPost]
* As Europe’s Lockdowns Drag On, Police and Protesters Clash (NYT)
* Homeschooling doubled from pandemic’s start to last fall (AP)
* Facing sweltering soldiers and flooded ports, NATO to focus on climate change (WaPo)
* In the Latin Quarter, Paris’s Intellectual Heartbeat Grows Fainter -- The closing of beloved bookstores is the latest in a series of blows to the neighborhood’s cultural vibrancy, a long decline accelerated by the pandemic. (NYT)
* Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform a key internet law on Wednesday, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms. In testimony prepared for a joint hearing before two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees on Thursday, Zuckerberg acknowledged the calls from lawmakers for changes to a law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives companies like Facebook immunity from liability over content posted by users. (Reuters)
* Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte was let off with a warning after he violated state hunting regulations in the trapping and killing of a wolf near Yellowstone National Park last month. The news comes as a raft of bills heads to Gianforte’s desk aimed at reducing the state’s wolf population by making it significantly easier to kill them. [HuffPost]
* State and federal officials have issued stark warnings about California water supplies this summer and have told farmers to prepare for shortages. [Sacramento Bee]
* Banks provided $3.8 trillion in financing to oil, gas and coal companies — more in 2020 than they did in 2016, the year countries signed the Paris climate agreement. The trajectory of the finance sector is heading “definitively in the wrong direction,” warned a new report published by several nonprofits. [HuffPost]
* KFC, Taco Bell to Start Taking Orders via Text (WSJ)
* Silicon Valley firms in no hurry to open up offices despite easing of virus ban (Reuters)
* Former director of national intelligence says upcoming Pentagon UFO report reveals technology ‘we don’t have’ (KTVU)
* The American bald eagle population has more than quadrupled from 72,400 to 316,700 over the last decade, the US Fish and Wildlife Service says. (CNN)
* In one of those random developments that make sense only in baseball a relatively obscure outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles, Anthony Santander, has become a big-time fan favorite in Britain. (MLB.com)
* Parents Can’t Tell If Pandemic Inhibited Toddler’s Social Skills Or If He’s Just Taking After Dad (The Onion)
***
Lost in my mind
Lost in my mind
Oh I get lost in my mind
Lost, I get lost
I get lost in my mind
Lost in my mind
Yes I get lost in my mind
Lost, I get lost
I get lost
Oh I get lost
Oh I get...
-- Songwriters: Chris Zasche / Kenny Hensley / Robert Tyler Williams / Josiah David Johnson / Jonathan Eric Russell / Charity Rose Thielen
-30-
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