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from the with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility dept.
The main reason why the U.S. military can promote global peace is because of the aura of invincibility it gained in World War II, because of the end of the Cold War, and because of its overwhelming military spending and technological advantage. But an aura of invincibility is a dangerous thing. And unfortunately, there are signs of rot.
Today, the U.S. military has fallen under the Bureaucracy Rule. The U.S. has no great power rivals, and thank God for that. Iraq and Afghanistan have not caused an identity crisis for the U.S. military because many senior commanders view these as "freakshow" wars — counterinsurgency wars, not the kind of "real" wars that militaries fight.
What are the signs that an organization has become a bureaucracy?
The first is excessive PowerPoint. Every organization should ban PowerPoint ( http://theweek.com/audio/442552/ban-powerpoint ). But it has become particularly endemic in the military ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?_r=0 ).
The fact that the new Defense secretary has banned PowerPoint from some senior briefings is a step in the right direction ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2015/02/23/the-war-on-powerpoint-in-the-military-continues/ ).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by rleigh on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:56PM
YES!
Powerpoint presentations have ruined every field they are used in. Good speakers do not need the crutch of many tens of slides, all of which fly past so rapidly the audience has little opportunity to digest or remember the content, and often are recited word for word by the speaker--a totally pointless waste of time. From that point of view a handout summarising the important facts or providing complex diagrams is worth much more. I'd rather the speaker threw powerpoint in the bin, properly considered and prepared what they needed to convey to their audience, and then used a small number of overheads/blackboard/whiteboard/easel to provide additional visual information.
It's not that powerpoint itself is the problem, it's just a tool. The problem is that it's misused by everyone who touches it. The older ways of presenting constrain the quantity and speed information can be delivered at, and gives the audience time to really absorb it. 60+ powerpoint slides in an hour is not better than a good speaker using a blackboard, or half a dozen acetates with an overhead projector. I sincerely believe that these limitations make for better speakers.
Consider what the listener gets out of a presentation. I can go to a powerpoint presentation and just zone out while the slides wash over me. I can leave unable to clearly retain much of what was delivered, because I'm not directly engaged with the speaker--they are just spewing a firehose of information without any consideration of the audience's ability to keep up the pace. This doesn't occur if I'm physically taking notes, and it's not like that's a big deal--I'm in the talk for the duration and putting in some effort doing that means I get far more out of it, and keeps me mentally engaged with what the speaker is delivering, which is the entire reason I'm there in the first place. Bad powerpoint presentations can turn the audience into vegetables; I'm not at all surprised it's being banned--I can only imagine how much time is cumulatively wasted through such ineffective and impractical communication.