Reviews without reading a books

Reviews or Presentations without reading books

Recently at a local Rotary Club meeting there was a speech and presentation on "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps". I remembered that there was a book by the same name, and Google tells me that, it was written by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease. I learnt that the book describes how men and women think, perceive and behave differently. I must say that the small reviews at on Amazon.com were interesting enough to entice interest in the subject.


The speaker at the Rotary Club was using a PowerPoint presentation. A the outset, we were told, by the speaker, that the presentation that he was using was not his own but was a copyright of somebody else....and he showed at the part of some remarks, on the slide. We were further told that that somebody had also used the presentation of some other person. The presentation contained only text of salient features of finding of Pease duo and the same is widely and freely available on the internet.

I was amazed why was it called a copyright then? What was under copyright? Was it the text? Or was the process of first copying of the text on to the slide of PPT? Or the second copy that the speaker brought along was a work of copyright...that is to say that no further copying is allowed?

I seemed to get more confused. Why the speaker did insist that it was a copyright?

Well, the answer seems to be that I may not recognize my responsibility in protecting the intellectual property of others but I would insist that others need to follow copyright of my material, which itself has been obtained by infringement, stealing.

I do not intend to review the presentation. However, I asked the speaker if he had read the original book and he said that he hadn't. It was good that almost nobody, from the audience present there, had read the book; nobody asked him probing questions. The questions asked were sort of " how can you say this....?" and to which the presenter would reply, 'those are not my views but are of that author...?"

One of the Rotarian opined that these days nobody has a time in the world to read books however interested one may be in reading and hence it was okay to read review or somebody present the review even if the reviewer might present his review from the another review or from reading the executive summaries that are available on the internet. And thus the speaker was helping the club and its members.

And yes, he was correct. The whole internet generation is doing that. One of my friends sent me a request to view his picture album on Great Wall of China. Quite enthralled I opened it only to find a link taking me to a site where there was a huge collection of images and photographs from sites including Google Images, Flickr and Picasa. Not long ago I heard one such talk / presentation on 'Conquering the Everest"...just 2 days before Sir Hillary died. The presenter had gathered all important photos and information from the internet but presented it effectively.

Bottom-line is : present effectively even if you go to the extreme of calling for a copyright of your work when you have unashamedly not recognized other’s copyright.