--- Jim Elwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jesse: > > Let's just say I am not nearly as pessimistic as you are about "stealth" > metrication giving any > ammo to the anti-metricationists, nor do I give so-called "leadership" much > credence on this > issue. Americans, for better or worse, are very independent-minded on some > things. That means > that they don't want to be told how to measure, but it also means the > "anti-metric" types cannot > stop metrication.
While I agree that the US is statistically more independent than other societies, the blanket characterization of Americans as just plain independent of authority sounds kind of like a stereotype to me. There are a lot of different kinds of people in this country. Some are very independent, some aren't. Some tend to cooperate with authority (even when not happy with the decisions that have been made), others like to rebel. I know people of each type. It is certainly true that throughout our history, charismatic leaders have had a big impact on a lot of things. Bush led his party to vigorously support a war they might never have even thought of fighting otherwise. I suspect that a lot of the kind of people who are skeptical about changing the status quo are also the kind of people who hold obedience to authority figures as a high value, since both of these attitudes are along the lines of preserving a historical way of doing things. I could be wrong, but that was my line of thought. > Case in point: my own company, which I metricated more than 10 years ago. No > one could stop me > (including a couple of anti-metric employees), and I now have introduced over > 100 employees to > metric in their daily work lives (including things like using millimeters in > word processing > programs). I didn't need any "leader" to tell me to do this, and no > anti-metric forces (public > or private) could stop me. Wonderful! But you're in the electronics business. I think all of the engineering types I know are relatively friendly toward metrication. You might have a harder time metricating a farm or an oil refinery. Also, are you high in the ranks at your company? If so, I'd call that an example of leadership. The question isn't whether companies and people already friendly toward metric are free to switch; they certainly are. The question is whether companies with employees and leadership not particularly friendly toward metric will change without putting up a fight. That's the area where I think leadership at the government level could smooth things over. > I see so much metric even in the grocery stores, and I know how much US > manufacturers have > metricated, that there is simply no going back. It will take a while before > the consumer facade > of colloquial units disappears, but it is happening. I also think it is a > "tipping point" type > of event -- once we reach critical mass a lot more metrication will happen a > lot faster. Like I said, I agree with you on those points. Metric is inevitable and it's taking over one way or another. I just think there will be years of passionate resistance from certain areas of the population when that happens. And I think many (not all) of those people would resist less (they'd still grumble, but with less enthusiasm) if they were told by an authority figure that it's happening and they should accept it. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
