Powerpoint as a information tool in the military

Crooked Timber has one of the slides featured in Tom Ricks' book Fiasco as an example of why things went wrong in Iraq:

Now, I have a long history of hating Powerpoint and everything it represents.

As someone who has worked in both industry and the government, I have seen it abused to the point of pain.

Anyone who thinks this is an effective communications medium is nuts. I have seen and argued with multiple folks over the year as how slides like this are not a total commuincations solution.

You have to have all the parts of the package: the briefer, the ability to ask questions and the context of hearing other people discuss this type of information.

Dr. Edward Tufte, the guy who helped NASA after the Challenger disaster, has for years hosted seminars on the presentation of information. He savages slides like this. I attended one of these seminars after a new boss recommended this after spending years in the Pentagon taking briefings like this.

I would rather get a well-prepared briefing without slides than a thin one with these crazy slides that take hours.