If there is a country who sells and love all things tech, that’s Germany. Still, with measure.
I campaign for a cap on the production of powerpoint. There’s just too much of it in our lives, like air conditioned draughts on planes, LCD screens in Italian railway stations, CO2 in cities, balsamico on soups, rucola in sandwiches. It’s a dangerous form of pollution. It may be necessary but sometimes it’s bordering on overdose. And: it is bad for your brain.
In German board rooms there’s a lot of iPadding, in meetings in London or Frankfurt some clients take notes on their tablets (wonder how they do). Paperless meetings are on every corporate agenda.
So you can imagine my happyness the other day when a colleague in research came in the meeting room with his laptop, switched it on and then switched off the projector and started to do its presentation using a blackboard. Not an electronic one: a black one. And he used chalk.
I must say that I remember every concept he explained. He resorted to the use of his laptop only for showing a video at the end. Maybe there are some receptors in my 1960s-produced brain who are particularly sensible to blackboard and go in overdrive (like supercar) when the chalk handwriting arabesque start forming on a black and rough surface. And when those characters are crafted by mathematicians, with a self-contained and rounded writing, bingo…the well-being factor of seing maths on a blackboard without an Econometrics exam approaching release all my memorization endorphines.
I wonder what happened to the APP party, the anti-power point party that our friend Paolo the other day recalled in one of our e-mail conversations. They should campaign at the Nespresso coffeemachines in any corporation. They would find acolytes galore.
Back to the company, I must say that here limits apply. There is always a limit to the number of slides. Regulations – we’re in Germany, remember! – for contributions in Committee discussions say that your slides should be in American English (pity – I prefer British), maximum 5 slides. And this is already a big achievement. Still there are ways to get around regulations (also in Germany, yesss). There always BackUp Slides, and god knows how many of those (small) presentations are prepared!
On my first day of school I got punished. I was talking too much and the teacher sent me “behind the blackboard”. I advocate the same punishment now for those committing powerpoint abuse. Catholic-style: re-customize a 90-slide presentation 17 times without any help by assistants, on your iPad (screen keyboard only) between 19.45 and 8.30.
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