What’s with all the slide decks?

News from the world of real jobs: Apparently, sometime between 10 and 20 years ago, it became standard for people to communicate by sending slide decks around. These slides are never presented. They aren’t intended to be presented. They’re born, they’re sent around, and they die. What? I stress, the question is not why (or if) people give bad presentations. The mystery is why everyone is using presentation software for communication that is not a presentation. Theory 1: Everybody dumb Is it because we’re all dummies? I’m putting this theory first because I suspect that you, beloved readers, will favor it. True, if you ask people why they make slides instead of writing, they’ll usually say, “because nobody wants to read”. So there’s that. But I don’t consider this much of an explanation. Dummies though we may be, we’ve been like that a long time. If we entered the Slideocene 15 years ago, why then? Why not before? Theory 2: The decline of reading Did we get worse at reading? The…