I want to—here and now—publicly apologize for my role, small though it was, in creating this monster.

It must be noted that occasionally someone strikes back. In his book describing the overhaul of IBM (Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Inside IBM's Turnaround [2000]), Louis Gerstner tells of an early visit to one of IBM's major operations. When the general manager was on the second "foil" of his briefing, Gerstner relates, "I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector. After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said, 'Let's just talk about your business.' "

Edward Tufte has written three books on the subject of graphical display of information and has developed the concepts of chart junk and a measure of content, the data to ink ratio. "Chart junk comprises all ingredients of a figure that do not convey information, such as elaborate artwork, complicated grids and corporate branding elements," he writes. "In effective illustrations, most of the ink should be used to display data, not graphical junk." In his latest book, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Tufte notes, "The available templates make it easy to create slides in which graphical junk overwhelms information."

Image: U.S. Air Force

Figure 1: U.S. Air Force logo.

PowerPoint makes it easy to create attractive logos, but even when the artwork is pretty good, one must be careful with the choice of words. For example, in these days of precision weapons, this new Air Force logo, seems somewhat inappropriate!

Moreover, just think what might have been if PowerPoint had existed 150 years ago. On his delightfully irreverent Web site (www.norvig.com), Peter Norvig shows a six-chart PowerPoint briefing for the Gettysburg Address, ending with this summary chart.

Image: Peter Norvig

Figure 2: Gettysburg address.

Can't you just picture President Lincoln saying to the audience at Gettysburg, "I'll just let you read this slide"?

Of course, one of the principal problems is the constant overuse of buzzwords and phrases. You know: synergy, 24/7, outa-the-box, et cetera.

One of the new favorites is serendipity, whose origin is interesting and not widely known. Many years ago, Sri Lanka, before it was Ceylon, was called Serendip. The English writer, Horace Walpole, wrote a story called "The Three Princes of Serendip." In the story, these three guys wandered around and kept making marvelous discoveries by accident. From that, Walpole coined the word serendipity.

Now there are some phrases that should be used more. My favorite is Serbonian Bog. This bog is a large marshy tract in the northern part of ancient Egypt into which large armies entered and were swallowed up entirely, never to be heard from again. I find it a useful and accurate description of the Department of Defense Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) process. An acceptable substitute term would be "black hole."

There are serious efforts being made to counter the growth of content-free briefings. Several companies have briefings (!) or even courses on presenting information sensibly. All these efforts have helped and will help more in time. However, laudatory as they are, their total impact on the briefing scene is ecologically comparable to removing a few clams from Pismo Beach.

Something much more dramatic is needed; something that reaches down into the hapless audience and causes them to react in such a way that the briefer receives an unambiguous, unforgettable message.

A careful analysis has indicated that no amount of writing or lecturing about the problem will bring about a solution; that some form of shock treatment will be required to effect the major change so desperately needed. The only person available to shock is, of course, the briefer and, indirectly, his boss or bosses in attendance. Repeatedly making briefers understand in a "loud and clear" way that those briefings are intolerable and have no content should cause a major reexamination of the entire issue of transfer and interchange of information, thereby bringing about the demise of the current briefing.

Fortunately for all, a technique has been invented to provide this shock. This "solution" has come from the most logical of sources, the Internet. It will send a clear, unambiguous message to the perpetrator. The identity of its inventor or inventors is not known to me, but I fervently hope that he/she/they would be in serious contention for the Nobel Prize.