Article | Summer 2007
Featured Working Paper: PowerPoint Demonstrations: Digital Technologies of Persuasion
by David Stark (Sociology) and Verena Paravel (COI)
How do individuals conduct demonstrations before the public using digital tools? Our motivations for addressing this question can be stated as four related propositions:
(1) In our era, political and technical questions are increasingly entangled. As researchers in the field of science and technology studies have shown, technical questions almost always have a political component.
(2) With policy decisions today involving complex technical questions, demonstrations are as likely to marshal charts, figures, models, and simulations as to mobilize popular movements in the street. The entanglement of technical problems and political issues reshapes modes of demonstration.
(3) In our era, new technologies of representation are digital technologies, and thus, public demonstrations are increasingly digital demonstrations.
(4) PowerPoint is the most ubiquitous form of digitally assisted demonstration. Together with the spreadsheet, word processor, email, website, and search engine, PowerPoint is one of the key products of the personal computing revolution to become a part of everyday life. A careful examination of this widely used technology is critical for understanding public discourse in a democratic society.
To study the cognitive style and the distinctive morphology of PowerPoint demonstrations, we examined two cases where the new technology was used in important issues of public concern—the presentations of the seven finalist architectural teams for rebuilding the World Trade Center and Colin PowellÂ's PowerPoint demonstration to the UN Security Council.
The persuasive power of digital demonstrations suggests that they are likely to become a pervasive feature of public life. Will these new forms of demonstration erode democracy? Or will they provide new tools for citizen-participants to redefine expertise in new forms? In Â"PowerPoint Demonstrations,Â" we explore these questions.
See Also
- Center on Organizational Innovation (COI)
- Working Paper: PowerPoint Demonstrations: Digital Technologies of Persuasion
