烦人的PPT和愚蠢的我们

没有人会喜欢晦涩而乏味的PPT演讲。PPT总会把一件简单的事情搞得冗长又复杂，而真正的演说大师则是化繁为简。没有了PPT，世界将变得更加美好。

The real problem with PowerPoint? It's us, stupid

By Pilita Clark

Financial Times

An email dropped into my inbox not long ago from a man in Japan who wanted to know if I could come to Tokyo to speak at a conference.

I immediately said yes, thrilled at the thought of a couple of days out of the office in one of my favourite cities. No sooner had I started swanking[1] around at work, casually dropping news of the impending trip to colleagues, when another email arrived from Tokyo.

[1]swank：to behave or speak too confidently because you think that you are very important, in order to attract other people's attention and admiration 出风头，夸耀，炫耀，卖弄

Just because you won, there's no need to swank.

没必要因为赢了就四处夸耀。

It came from the conference organisers and contained two chilling[2] words: “PowerPoint presentation”. Every speaker was expected to make one, it turned out, and the organisers were keen to see mine.

[2]chilling：frightening 令人恐惧的，令人不寒而栗的

a chilling tale

令人毛骨悚然的故事

Happy thoughts of sashimi[3] and sake[4] instantly gave way to panic. This was not because of the usual objections to PowerPoint presentations: too long, too impenetrable and too good at reducing any room's atmosphere to lifeless tedium[5]. It was more that I had made it through my entire working life without ever having to deliver one. Nor had any colleague within earshot, because journalists rarely need to.

[3]sashimi：a Japanese dish consisting of small pieces of uncooked fish that are eaten with soy sauce 生鱼片

[4]sake：a Japanese alcoholic drink made from rice and usually drunk warm 日本清酒

[5]tedium：the quality of being boring for a long time 单调乏味

But the organisers seemed to think slides would help when a speech was being simultaneously translated, so I asked for advice from a friend who is known as a presentation whizz[6]. “Use big fonts, hardly any charts, a few slides, tell a story and keep it simple,” she said. “And use a lot of big pictures.”

[6]whizz：a person with a very high level of skill or knowledge in a particular subject 能手；奇才；高手

a computer whizz

计算机高手

I could see her point. I had just been to two energy conferences where two different speakers both used the same two black and white photos of New York's Fifth Avenue at Easter in presentations on the speed of technological change. The first photo was taken in 1900, when the street was rammed with horses and carts. “Can you spot the car?” each speaker asked, eventually pointing to a solitary vehicle. The second was taken in 1913, when cars had taken over. “Can you spot the horse?” both speakers said. You couldn't.

It was memorable stuff. By the time I arrived in Tokyo, where I was speaking about British climate change policy, I had a batch of pictures ready, mostly of Prince Charles.

I was also worried: company executives were expected at the conference and my presentation was shaping up to be unlike those I had seen most business people make.

These were typically a festival of unfathomable[7] graphs and bullet points, often read out verbatim[8], even though PowerPoint became a byword for boring people into oblivion almost as soon as it hit the market in 1987.

[7]unfathomable [ʌn'fæðəməb(ə)l]

impossible to understand 无法理解的；难以理解的

For some unfathomable reason they built the toilet next to the kitchen.

不知道为什么，他们把卫生间建在了厨房隔壁。

[8]verbatim [vɜ:'beɪtɪm]

using exactly the same words as were originally used 一字不差地；逐字地

She had an amazing memory and could recall verbatim quite complex conversations.

她记忆力惊人，能够一字不差地回想起很复杂的谈话内容。

People were already talking about “death by PowerPoint” by 1996, when Accountancy Age magazine quoted an executive using the phrase. Since then, the program has spawned[9] an entire industry of critics.

[9]spawn：to cause something new, or many new things, to grow or start suddenly （使）产生，（使）突然增长

The new economic freedom has spawned hundreds of new small businesses.

新的经济自由催生了上百家新的小企业。

Scholars blame it for trivialising[10] information. Educators say it teaches children to make sales pitches[11] instead of school reports. US generals have called it dangerous, because it gives the illusion of understanding and control.

[10]trivialize：to make something seem less important than it really is 使显得不重要

[11]sales pitch：a talk or a way of talking that is intended to persuade you to buy something 商品宣传，推销行话

Yet the business world has taken no notice. PowerPoint has been installed on more than a billion computers worldwide to relentlessly stupefying[12] effect. And after Tokyo, I can see why.

[12]stupefy ['stju:pɪfaɪ](v.)

1）to make someone tired and unable to think clearly 使疲惫而思维不清，使因疲劳而昏昏沉沉

2）to surprise or shock someone very much 使惊讶；使震惊

First, it takes a lot of time to think carefully about what you want to say and find the best way to say it, even if your company is large enough to employ a team of PowerPoint geniuses. I tried to follow my friend's advice in Japan, but ran out of time and ended up resorting to an unseemly number of bullet points.

This was partly because of another problem: peer pressure. If leaders in your industry turn up with the same impenetrable slides at every conference — a constant risk at business gatherings — it is easy to think you will not be penalised for following suit, but might be if you deviate.

This points to a larger dilemma[13]: the tendency to confuse complexity with expertise. Everyone knows the most effective speakers explain things simply. And everyone knows countless successful people who don't.

[13]dilemma：a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two different things you could do 左右为难，两难境地

Ultimately, PowerPoint and its many derivatives are not to blame for this, though the world might be a better place if more people spoke without them. Until then, it is best to remember that the most important thing you can do with PowerPoint is use it in a way that actually helps you make a point.