REALITY CHECK: A short while ago I had to give a presentation to over 500 people at a conference in Bangkok entitled ‘Language Kills’. With such a provocative title, the opening had to be powerful. It was. The slides showed alright on my laptop monitor but that all-too-familiar ‘no signal’ sign was all the audience could read on the vast screen behind me. Once we sorted out the technical glitches, I started again. But not only was the opening – me speaking in Russian – ruined, but somehow the slides had reset themselves to advance every fifteen seconds regardless of what I was saying.
First, a bit about Powerpoint. Senior military commanders despair at the amount of time their junior officers spend preparing briefings using this tool. They argue that the medium, with its ability to move all manner of colours, shapes and sizes around the slide often tends to obscure the message. They also argue that the simplicity with which complex intellectual constructs can be reduced to a series of two-dimensional bullet points and multiple map overlays obscures the superficiality of the purported strategic thinking.