“Can a software package edit our thoughts?” Turns out, it can.

Somehow, a piece of software designed, fifteen years ago, to meet a simple business need has become a way of organizing thought at kindergarten show-and-tells. “Oh, Lord,” one of the early developers said to me. “What have we done?”

I also love this:

AutoContent was added in the mid-nineties, when Microsoft learned that some would-be presenters were uncomfortable with a blank PowerPoint page—it was hard to get started. “We said, ‘What we need is some automatic content!’ ” a former Microsoft developer recalls, laughing. “ ‘Punch the button and you’ll have a presentation.’ ” The idea, he thought, was “crazy.” And the name was meant as a joke. But Microsoft took the idea and kept the name—a rare example of a product named in outright mockery of its target customers.