ABSTRACT
In the good old days, the authors are told that public speakers could produce oratory that would hold the attention of people for hours on end without any recourse to artificial aids whatsoever. As with most nostalgic visions of a golden age in the past, it is only partially true. Some of the great oratory of the twentieth century has been captured on film and has been made available on the Internet. Characteristic of the pre-modern era of presentation was a great variation in the quality of public speaking. The best was wonderful, the worst was truly awful. The author believes that there is an emerging approach to public speaking that is in direct reaction to the unthinking and uncritical use of presentation graphics. If people characterise such use as modernism, then it becomes logical to characterise the emergent ideas as 'post-modern'.
