@pgibson

I can not comment on your experience but based on what I've read so far 'dogma' seems a bit strong.  However, I have to admit to being slightly bemused as I read related material that some people come across a little protective of the status quo when it comes to Bitcoin units and their naming.

The reason for my bemusement is the idea of anything (other than the code itself) being 'established' - especially in an 'always has and always will' kind of way - considering how potentially early we are in the history of Bitcoin.  If demand and frequency of transactions is to reach a stage such that trade in the smaller 'denominations' are commonplace the number of Bitcoin users today will be dwarfed as a proportion of the whole.  So whilst I wasn't in the Bitcoin community early enough to be in on the discussion when 'it was decided' what the nomenculture of subdivisions should be, regardless of what the consensus among the current active members may be, could it be somewhat premature to be closing doors to other options?

Having said all this my guess is that for most it's nothing like dogma at all, rather having thought it through many have concluded and will remain convinced unless persuaded otherwise, that the way it is is also the way forward.  That is to be expected.

To me though, and given your response and the link knight22 kindly posted, I'm not alone in thinking the fact that the current 'language of representation' of Bitcoin is not 'hardwired' into Bitcoin in its native format opens the field wide open in terms of how we represent it, talk about it and most importantly, think about it.  It's a big neon sign that says: 'New Paradigms This Way'!  It's too big an opportunity in my eyes to be satisfied with a slight variation on the theme of the way people have always thought about money and numbers.

But whilst part of my argument against the whole, 'mikes/millies/satoshies' thing is that it is a wasted opportunity it is not either similar enough to what people are used to to take on board without having to think differently.  And if users are going to have to think differently anyway, why not do so in a way that is going to serve them better in terms of more of a grasp of quantities of money, from the vast to the tiny?  The thing is my guess is most people might be able to imagine a tenth of a penny/cent or whatever from the currency with which they're familiar but beyond that?  Whatever currency we look at (since decimalisation in the 70s in the UK) there's a primary unit and a secondary unit one hundredth of the size.  That's it.  If ever there was a need to go smaller it's long past now to the vast majority of users of most currencies with the inflation that's inherent to fiat currencies.  The only numbers outside of common usage  are large ones (typically those beyond the value of their home) and as I alluded to earlier, politicians can get away with all kinds of outrageous financial behaviour simply because most people don't get and don't care about the difference for instance between a billion and ten billion.  As for numbers less than one I hope I am not underestimating the intelligence of the general populace when I guess that the vast majority, at the rare times they actually think of numbers smaller than one, just think of them simply them as 'small'.  Smaller numbers, even the denominations nowhere near as small as the satoshi, are totally unfamiliar territory to the majority.  I don't see that giving the denominations friendly names  (whilst having to know the relationships between them) overcomes this problem.

As an aside I have a theory people are a lot less frugal with their money when it's so easy to be dismissive of smaller amounts of money as 'not much money'.  If the money one possesses or handles was seen as a sliding logarithmic scale there may be a higher tendency for people not to think 'wastefully' about it according to denomination.

So that's why I'd like to see something along the lines of my 'power bitcoin' suggestion become popular.

What I have said above however says nothing about the challenges that have been raised about my proposal.

First I'd like to address 'people don't think in logarithms'.  This I can not deny.  It is (or rather the associated inability to deal with all but a small range of numbers) is one of the symptoms of an innumerate society as put forward by John Allen Paulos in his book 'Innumeracy'.  There is no denying, as deepceleron says above, that calculating the price of '5 items at 20 whatever-the-fuck-BTC' is easier than the same with logarithm.  But this is only true for as long as people are only having to consider one or two denominations.  If houses, cars and cans of beans are each in their own denomination; if all (or most) of these denominations are less than one Bitcoin and if the relationship between these denominations have to be learned, remembered and be borne in mind to get an idea of the scale of money being talked about, again, I can't see this as being a simpler solution.

How do most people calculate the price of buying 5 items @ £/$ 80, 800 or 8,000 each?  Don't they lose the zeroes, do the sum then add the zeroes back in?  Likewise (for those who can do it) for 5 items @ 0.00008 BTC each to get to 0.0004?  Is it really more difficult, in the case of the latter, to multiply 5 items by 16.8 ^BTC to get 17.4?

If these kinds of mental calculations required an understanding of the mathematics that underlies it (going by how few know how to square or cube a number) I think I'd be onto a non-starter.  But you don't need to be able to add ten to the power of whatever to the number in order use this notation (at least you don't need to know that that's what you're doing).  What I'm saying is I'm not buying the 'too complicated' argument.

But maybe theorising about perceived difficulty among the general population is a bit of a waste of time.  Maybe I could do some initial research with my friends and family see how they get on.

As for favourite clients and GUIs this is one of the beauties of an idea such as this in that it's not a big deal if a few like the idea to have someone write some code and to be able to put it to work.  It doesn't matter in a couple of years whether it's 99% or 1% of users still thinking of all quantities in relation to One Bitcoin.  'Power Bitcoin' might become and remain a niche ultra-geek hobby or could ride a meme-wave and if found to be of general value, even break onto the shores of other currencies and larger (and smaller) numbers in the wider world.

Anyone game on having a go?