Summary
A case study that examines the catalysts that led to Microsoft PowerPoint displacing former slideshow technologies resulting in the eventual death of the overhead and 35mm slide projectors.
Introduction
PowerPoint is everywhere. This standard Microsoft Office application is used daily in schools, post-secondary institutions, corporations, government, and surprisingly, even found on dating profiles or at parties. It is used worldwide and the term “PowerPoint” is synonymous with the term “slideshow”. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a time where people had to prepare and deliver presentations or lessons without an accompanying digital, multimedia slide deck in the form of a PowerPoint behind them. Nonetheless, what is particularly interesting about PowerPoint is that despite its widespread use, humanity seems to have a love/hate relationship with the PowerPoint presentation itself. Thus, how did a form of presentation software that we love to hate become ubiquitous with most lectures or presentations around the globe? In order to better understand the catalysts that allowed PowerPoint to become so widely adopted, it is important to have an understanding of what slideshow technology looked like prior to PowerPoint’s arrival on the market, as well as the technological and cultural shifts that were happening in the 1990s and early 2000s that made PowerPoint’s rise in popularity both inevitable and a prime example of media convergence.
Historical Context
The most surprising part of PowerPoint’s tipping point story is it was originally designed to improve and enhance the usability of its predecessors, not replace them. Humans have been using visual tools to enhance their presentations since ancient times, but slideshows with projectors did not begin to enter into the equation until 1895 with the introduction of the “Magic Lantern” (Velarde, 2019). By 1984, when Robert Gaskins had the idea for PowerPoint, anyone who wanted a slideshow to accompany their presentation typically had three choices: an overhead projector with transparencies, 35mm slides, or 35mm film projectors; but the 35mm slides and film required too much preparation on the part of the art department to be used daily, and overhead projector with transparencies tended to be the technology of choice (Gaskins, 2012).
In the book, Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint, Gaskins explains that in the corporate world at this time, the process of producing transparencies on a routine basis for company executives still tended to be quite complicated and time consuming. Teams would meet and discuss the content and layout of the transparencies, and then one person – typically the assistant or secretary – someone who was skilled at typing on a typewriter would type up the content. It would then need to be approved, photocopied onto transparencies (black ink only, as there was no colour copying at that time), and then distributed where needed only for the process to be repeated over and over again. Gaskins had long felt that there must be a better way of producing transparencies, and had at one point successfully created a Rube Goldberg style device for this purpose. While this invention was complicated to operate, it was popular within their place of work. Thus, as personal computers became more commonplace in offices in the early 1980s, Gaskins began to formulate the idea of a computer program that could be used to simplify the design process of overhead transparencies – and named it…”Presenter”! It was not until later that the name was changed to PowerPoint (Gaskins, 2012).
In 1987, the initial version PowerPoint 1.0 was released for Macintosh computers, and shortly after, Microsoft acquired PowerPoint. Surprisingly, PowerPoint 2.0 was still released for Macintosh in 1988 before Windows in 1990. According to Gaskins, PowerPoint 1.0 was designed to create overhead transparencies, whereas PowerPoint 2.0 was to create 35 mm slides (2012). If no further versions of PowerPoint had ever been released, then this would have been a case study on how PowerPoint was designed to enhance the usability of overhead and slide projectors. However, important technological and cultural shifts were happening prior and subsequent to the release of PowerPoint 3.0 that allowed PowerPoint to eventually displace transparencies, overhead projectors, and 35mm slideshows, and become the dominant slideshow technology of the 21st century.
The Tipping Point
In 1992, Microsoft released PowerPoint 3.0, which was the first version designed for video projection and it had fun, built-in features to enhance slideshows, such as animated transitions. Nonetheless, PowerPoint 3.0 did not immediately displace the overhead and 35mm slide projector, as multimedia projectors that could display the slideshow directly from a computer were initially rare and expensive, and laptop computers were not as common or as capable as desktops which limited portability. However, over the course of the next decade this changed, as technological advances resulted in multimedia projectors and computers becoming more affordable, capable, and commonplace (Gaskins, 2012).
By 2002, it is estimated that 20-30 million PowerPoint presentations were being delivered worldwide every single day (Craig & Amernic, 2006). A “technological convergence” had occurred, which Jenkins describes as “the digitization of all media content” (2001). In this case, once the process of making slideshows was digitized and all the remaining pieces had fallen into place such as the affordability and portability of other components, the digital realm is where slideshows were destined to remain and is where the slideshow exists today only without the need for transparencies, overheads, and 35mm projectors.
However, technological convergence alone cannot explain PowerPoint’s popularity and the reality is that PowerPoint is also a case of cultural convergence. Cultural convergence is described as “the explosion of new forms of creativity at the intersections of various media technologies, industries and consumers” (Jenkins, 2001). In the corporate world, PowerPoint helped to enhance corporate communications for countless businesses (Gaskins, 2012). However, with its assorted templates, graphics, combined with connection to the internet, PowerPoint allowed for creative slideshows to be produced and shared like never before. Thus, as people became increasingly familiar with its use, it began to be adopted in other settings as it was widely available to everyone as a standard component of Windows Office suite.
In higher education, PowerPoint was (mostly) welcomed enthusiastically in place of overhead projectors. PowerPoint helped to lighten the load of many scholars at a time when they were often being asked to take on more and more responsibilities, and more importantly, students responded well to PowerPoint lectures as it made note taking easier (Gaskins, 2012). Finally, it also further reflected society’s shift away from orality and in favour of more visual mediums (Gabriel, 2008).
Conclusion
Today, the reality is that PowerPoint may have revolutionized the way that presentations are created and delivered, but it did not invent slideshow presentations. Even one of PowerPoint’s most vocal critics admitted that “PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector” (Tufte, 2003). Because at the end of the day and all “death by PowerPoint” jokes aside, PowerPoint is just a digitized way of making slides and projecting them to add visuals to presentations with a primary purpose still recognizable to its predecessors. Eventually, PowerPoint itself will face a similar fate of media convergence where the right catalysts will create a tipping point that favours a new form of slideshow, presentation technology.
References
Craig, R.J., & Amernic, J.H. (2006). PowerPoint presentation technology and the dynamics of teaching. Innov High Educ 31, 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-006-9017-5
Gabriel, Y. (2008). Against the tyranny of PowerPoint: Technology-in-use and technology abuse. Organization Studies 29(02): 255-276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840607079536
Gaskins, R. (2012). Sweating bullets: Notes about inventing PowerPoint. Vinland Books. https://www.robertgaskins.com/powerpoint-history/sweating-bullets/gaskins-sweating-bullets-webpdf-isbn-9780985142414.pdf
Jenkins, H. (2001, June 1). Convergence? I diverge. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2001/06/01/235791/convergence-i-diverge/
Tufte, E. (2003, September 1). PowerPoint is evil. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2003/09/ppt2/
Velarde, O. (2019, April 23). Before PowerPoint: The evolution of presentations. Visme Virtual Learning Center. https://visme.co/blog/evolution-of-presentations/