Revisiting old friends

Edward Tufte knows how to make a point. And he knows how information can be obscured, as well, which he says is expedited through the use of PowerPoint. (I agree.) An expert in the visual presentation of information, Tufte provides myriad examples of both good and bad presentations on his Web site.

I revisited his site today in search of the link to a PowerPoint example showing how badly this tool can mangle words and thoughts - Lincoln's Gettysburg Address ala PowerPoint. Take a look - it makes the point (no pun intended) faster than you can say "Four score and seven years ago..."

But the thing I learned today, in revisiting these old friends, was that Peter Norvig, the author of the aforementioned PowerPoint version of Lincoln's thoughts, is the director of research at Google. Hmmm...