Are you the master of your presentation?

Imagine the following scenario set in a classroom. (Please be aware: the following lines are somewhat fictional...)

Students are awaiting the lecturer. Entrance: the lecturer. She bows to the computer, praying it will boot up quickly. 5 minutes into booting casual conversations among students arise and the first phones on the table feature flying birds crashing into green monsters without arms and legs. The printout of slides are handed down and by the time the PowerPoint presentation is loaded some students already have read through the set of slides and go back to sleep.
There we go, the presentation is loaded, with text and students end their discussion on how loaded they were at the weekend. The lecturer bows down before the screen, calling "all hail to powerpoint" and starts a monologue and the a dialogue with the screen. There is almost no eye-contact or any kind of rapport with the students. The lecturer keeps on talking and apologizes to the screen that he or she forgot about a slide that was thought to be deleted the last time on the computer.
The lecture is over, students go home with mixed feelings and the lecturer kisses the computer good night.

Back to reality... or did we never leave it? I don't want to be the judge of that. My point is that many people tend to be the servant of technology, not the masters of technology. Why is that. As a presenter you are an expert of the field you present, anything else would be outrageous to me, especially in a university context.
I don't know when PowerPoint was established as a part of almost every presentation. Presentation = PowerPoint. Everyone accepted this apparently. I compare PowerPoint to a dragon, because if it is handled right, it can be your most powerful companion, but without knowledge of how to master it, the dragon will torch you in flames. So what do you do, if you don't know how to handle a dragon? You stay away from it!! Why not get a dog? What I am trying to say is, that many people seem to be forced into PowerPoint without ever been instructed how to use it.
Apparently PowerPoint was developed to help the Marketing Department communicate with other departments. So I assume, before PowerPoint they used memos, reports, flip-charts and blackboards to get their points across. It has the great capability to show visuals, animate graphs and everything you need to visualize a 1000 page long report. It is not about copying parts of the report onto the slides.
So where did this message get lost?? I still wonder?

Presenters, especially lecturers, need to break out of the imprisonment by technology. I am not necessarily saying that they should find other ways to present, but rather educate themselves in how to use this piece of technology. It must be clear, what PowerPoint is for and what it is not for. Then there are just a few functions to master and you will be the master of PowerPoint. This should eradicate scenarios like the one I described above.

What are other reasons, you can think of, why so many people tend to cling onto their PowerPoint slides and don't break free and use it as their humble servant?

Have a good week.