The Corporate Presentation

At the average meeting, the only break in the awful discussion is someone misusing the technology. While this is not a good thing, it is telling that - despite the looming spectre of public failure to make the !#%$)# thing work - everyone feels the need to show a few PowerPoint slides, display an overly colorful spreadsheet saved on a common server, or - daringly - bust through the firewall to show an external web page. Cue disaster, stage left.

It's strange that things so frequently go wrong, given that IT is ubiquitous in the modern office, from PCs and VOIP phones in the cubicles to LCD projectors and zillion-inch flatscreen monitors in the meeting rooms. Yet more often than not, things do go wrong, and pretty frequently, terribly so. Why, then, does everyone keep using the infrastructure of the e-office? I'd propose a social explantion: a personal facility for technology is viewed as a quality which complements or even replaces an ability, say, to speak coherently or listen meaningfully. It's seemingly much easier to fiddle with the projector's remote control than to learn to deliver better talks. Cue audience suffering, stage right.