The inventor of PowerPoint, who shaped the way modern society communicates information, dies

Dennis Austin, the inventor of PowerPoint. Photo credit: Emily Austin

On September 1, local time, Dennis Austin, the inventor of PowerPoint, passed away at his home in Los Altos, California, USA. He was 76 years old.

According to a report by the "Washington Post" on September 8, Austin's son Michael Austin revealed that the cause of death was lung cancer that metastasized to the brain.

PowerPoint has played an important role in shaping the way information is communicated in modern society and has become synonymous with the workplace world. Its astonishing popularity, especially the ease with which it can create boring and interminable presentations, has made it not only a tool that no one can live without, but also a rare cross-cultural icon. No matter which country it is in, PowerPoint can easily become the object of ridicule and entertainment in cultural and artistic works. It also has a well-known acronym: PPT.

Everyone can create a slideshow

In 1987, PowerPoint was released by the software company Forethought as the digital successor to the projector. Before this, creating slideshows was a labor-intensive task that was usually assigned to the design department or outsourced. PowerPoint allows anyone with access to a computer to create slideshows by simply clicking and rearranging information with a mouse.

As a software engineer, Austin worked with Robert Gaskins, the Forethought executive who conceived the software, to design PowerPoint to be easy to use.

"Our users are familiar with computers, but may not be familiar with graphics software," Austin wrote in an unpublished article on the history of PowerPoint's development. He uses a "direct interface" to make "what you are editing look exactly like the final product."

PowerPoint was originally called Presenter. It was initially targeted at Apple Macintosh computers with a graphical interface, providing users with the ability to merge graphics, clipart and multiple fonts. The goal, Austin writes, is "to create presentations, not just slides."

Gaskins writes in his book Sweating Bullets: Notes on the Invention of PowerPoint that "Dennis came up with at least half of the major design ideas" and takes full credit for smooth performance and flawless finish. "If Dennis hadn't been the one to design PowerPoint, no one would have heard of it," Gaskins added.

A few months after PowerPoint launched, Microsoft acquired Forethought for $14 million. Microsoft founder Bill Gates was initially skeptical but eventually changed his mind. The project was so big that Microsoft formed a new business unit.

Microsoft eventually added PowerPoint to the Office program suite, releasing it on the Windows operating system in 1990. By 1993, PowerPoint sales had exceeded $100 million. Now, users around the world use PowerPoint to create more than 30 million presentations every day.

PowerPoint was disliked by Steve Jobs

But on its way to becoming an important tool in the workplace, PowerPoint has been ridiculed by corporate executives, business school professors, and military officers.

“I hate the way people use PowerPoint presentations without thinking,” Apple founder Steve Jobs said, according to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. “People create presentations to Face the problem. But I want them to engage and discuss the problem on the table rather than showing a bunch of slides. People who know what they are talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

Jobs banned the company from using PowerPoint (but Apple developed its own presentation software). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos does the same and has executives write memos to share before meetings begin.

At the Pentagon, PowerPoint has its critics. “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” According to the New York Times, former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at a military conference in 2010. “We have met the enemy, and he is PowerPoint.”

"This is dangerous because it creates an illusion of understanding and an illusion of control," U.S. Army Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster told reporters.

In 2003, a NASA committee investigating the disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia found that a PowerPoint slide used "sloppy" and "vague quantitative terms" that obscured "life-threatening" safety aspects of the spacecraft. question. "The committee believes that the widespread use of PowerPoint presentation slides instead of technical papers illustrates problems with NASA's approach to technical communication," the report said.

Austin and Gaskins agree with the complaints but think they unfairly point the finger at the software rather than the people who use it to give lazy, poor presentations. “It’s like a printing press,” Austin told the Wall Street Journal in 2007. “It prints all kinds of crap.”

“The real story is participation and democracy”

Austin was born in Pittsburgh, USA on May 28, 1947. His father ran an executive association, and his mother was a typist who later became a housewife.

When Austin studied engineering at the University of Virginia, he used room-sized computers, and students programmed the machines to generate punch cards that were then entered into the computer by specially trained computer operators. After running the program overnight, students came back the next day to review the output.

After graduating in 1969, Austin attended graduate school at Arizona State University, MIT, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Subsequently, he worked at General Electric, Honeywell International and other companies.

In 1984, Austin was hired by Forethought, a company founded by two former Apple employees.

After Microsoft acquired Forethought, Austin continued to lead the development of PowerPoint until his retirement in 1996.

Austin's friends and family say he never minded the PowerPoint jokes. He's also well aware that the software he invented has been used for far more presentation purposes than intended, including not just proposals, but even used as props in stand-up comedy performances.

In 2005, Austin attended an event at the University of California, Berkeley, where David Byrne, lead singer of the rock band Talking Heads, gave a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the use of the software to create art.

"PowerPoint is the Rodney Dangerfield of software: it doesn't get respect," said Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of Berkeley and the organizer of the event. Dangerfield is an American stand-up comedian known for his self-deprecating humor, famous for his catchphrase "I get no respect!".

“It’s easy to scoff at the corporate nature of it (PowerPoint), but the real story is how participatory and democratic it is. High school students use it, rabbis (Jewish wise men) use it, and people even use it for wedding toasts. " Goldberg said.

Source: The Paper