Pecha Kucha and Blaise Pascal

Wired Magazine strikes again by alerting us to a recent phenomenon over in Japan, that is spreading through Europe: a presentation format called Pecha Kucha.

Think of it as haiku for the PowerPoint crowd: 20 slides for 20 seconds each, for a total of 6 min 40 seconds.

(I wonder if this can be applied to screencasting?)

Generally, I find brevity fascinating. I love the mental exercise of trying to make a small, simple program even more terse. I often wonder if creativity can be more fun within the rules of a framework (such as haiku or, say, the fugue musical form) or if it more satisfying to "smash the rules" entirely (such as free verse). I could write an entire essay on how musicians such as Mozart and Randy Rhoads were brilliant within musical frameworks whereas Beethoven and Edward Van Halen joyfully kicked the doors down.

The irony, of course, is that brevity is deceptive. The following quote applies just as much to writing as it does to programming. From the written word of Blaise Pascal:

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.