There are some potential standards that would encourage better inter-culture communication.

METRICS: why, o' why, do we still use inches, feet, miles, pounds, acres, leagues, ounces, Fahrenheit, tons, gallons, bushels, hogsheads, horsepower, pints, and teaspoons?

Why don't we (meaning Americans) adopt to the metric system? Wouldn't that make our lives much easier (and cut the cost of commerce)?

At least we have a common standard around time. Everyone on earth measures in seconds, hours, days, and weeks. And though some cultures have different months and years, all major businesses have standardized around the same calendar.

If we can standardize around time, we should be able to have other commonalities.

EMPLOYMENT: Resumes are written in thousands of different formats. This is starting to change since, it seems, half the resumes are created with the MS Word resume template -- but comparing resumes is still like comparing apples to oranges. Same thing with job orders -- there is no standard format (though HR-XML, Monster.com, and others are trying to push competing standards).

We need a standard.

The idea behind standards is to create a more frictionless and efficient society/business/communications.

But there are a lot of pitfalls to standardization as well. One pitfall in particular is that we might loose some of our individuality. I'm not a proponent of standardizing on school uniforms, for instance. I like promoting individuality. And there are few efficiencies gained from making everyone in school dress in ugly, overpriced uniforms.

(Should we standardize around Summation?   Write auren@summation.net)