Powerpoint waters down great ideas

I will admit that I still utilize PowerPoint, and I will also freely admit that until recently, I have used it in a bad way. We all learn to improve, and I think this example is the best way to show how PowerPoint can actually detract from good ideas.

On November 19, 1863 Abraham Lincoln gave perhaps one of the most famous speeches in American history. Legend has it that he wrote it on a napkin on the train to the location for the speech. Regardless of how it was written, this short speech has become memorable for some of the ideas wrapped up in it's rather short length. It is of course the Gettysburg Address. I have included the actual text below.

So what does this have to do with PowerPoint being dangerous? Here is an example of what the Gettysburg Address would look like if Lincoln had access to Powerpoint compliments of Peter Norvig.

Here is the actual text of the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.