No more PowerPoint.

The next thing I'm going to do is to refute Lucy Kellaway (Lucy Kellaway). Not so long ago, the fearless observer of the business folly did a little bit: she called for a ban on PowerPoint.

The complainant's reasoning is simple: Many PowerPoint reports are very bad. This is true, but it is not a reason to call for a ban. The use of good tools by the wrong people can produce terrible results, and all those who have seen my group set up racks are allowed to testify. Banning the use of a screwdriver is not a problem-solving method.

The same is true for PPT. It is a prosaic utility that is often improperly used. It is not the most elegant tool, but if the final work is poor and ugly, then blame the "craftsman". A lot of bad reports that people do with PowerPoint are just as bad without PowerPoint. Would it be better to listen to a nervous speaker improvising a rambling speech and a complete breakdown of the perception? Is it more enjoyable to watch a film that is made professionally but meaningless in the dark? Many readers will remember the business life before PPT was born. It's not the lost Garden of Eden.

PowerPoint is not the best software in the world. For a long time, its built-in templates have been ugly, the clip art is tacky and the animation is amusing. It's like iron heart to make yourself worthy of the name, it will be for no reason to add to the text of the bullets used for enumeration. In this way, the text should be very simple to align the work becomes complicated. (I'm still using PowerPoint for Version 2003.) You can think of my column as a child-care talker.

In spite of this shortcoming, PPT has two tasks to do well. It allows the speaker to quickly list the main points of the speech and produce slides showing pictures and charts. And when people confuse these two functions, the problem comes.

There is nothing wrong with remembering the main points of the lecture to assist in memory. PPT plays a role in this as well as any other tool, especially if you write as bad as I do. For the vast majority of speakers, this is preferable to other methods, such as reciting, improvising or writing the entire speech, and then doing it with a dull script.

The problem is, for some reason, many speakers have decided to project their speeches to the wall rather than printing them into postcard size and pasting them into 3x5-inch cards. I often use PowerPoint to list the main points of my speech. But I prefer to leave these slides to myself.

The second major purpose of PPT is to project visual aids onto the screen. It did very well at this point-and the old clip art of the past is now almost gone. Now, people from the Dilbert to "borrow" comics, from the internet to capture photos. The effects are usually satisfying enough.

If people learn a little bit about fonts, that's better, and if they learn to press the letter "B" button, the screen can be emptied briefly, which is good to add. But we can't be demanding perfection.

Lucy also spoke with approval to the famous condemnation of Edward Tufte, the outstanding information Designer, Edward Tufte. Professor Taft objected to the PPT for the following two reasons: one is "endless sequence, a damn slide followed by a bloody slide"; one is the asymmetric relationship between the speaker and the audience.

This is strange, because Taft did not admit that what he actually opposed was the public speaking itself. What is a more endless sequence than a speech? A damned word followed by another damned word. If you hate the idea of a speech, it doesn't matter. But you have to tell me the same.

Without much effort, the quality of most PPT reports can be greatly improved-much less than the amount of effort needed to improve the quality of corporate management. Why do we call for a ban?

The real problem is much more worrying. In the company, we are asked to read tedious articles written by people who do not write, and to watch people who have neither the talent nor the training to perform. For some reason, these laymen are more paid than most writers and actors. All this is frustrating, but we can't blame it on PowerPoint.

Before I conclude this article, I have to look at one of the most serious problems with PowerPoint: The Automatic Content Wizard feature-If you can't list the main points yourself, this feature will guide you through the work. The New Yorker, Yorker, has reported that the name of the Automatic Content Wizard is a joke, "a mockery of its target customers". The idea of introducing this feature is inherently fatal, but what is truly frightening is that it is created to satisfy a certain demand.

Fortunately, this demand may also have gone away: the 2007 version of PPT has gone beyond the ability to automatically generate content.