What's Up With 'Good Enough'?

What is it with the British and technology? One of the strange things about this country is that the technology always seems about half baked. We've already told you how combo washer-dryers don't really work. Yet everyone keeps buying them! Why not build the better mousetrap and sell it as the next million-pound idea? We saw the vacuum coffeemaker in a museum today. It is widely acknowledged as a slow way to brew coffee, but it is still sold on shelves today in Britain. It doesn't stop with appliances, however. The ice trays, for example, don't work nearly as well as ours. We have yet to find simple kitchen spatulas in the stores. The availability of ready-to-eat, prepackaged foods is decades behind that of American groceries. At some level, this makes no sense, because the English are renowned as a society of explorers and adventurers willing to borrow from other nations (once they've conquered them.) So what gives? As we have pondered this, we have concluded that it's a difference in standards. The British standard is "good enough." Once something "good enough" has been invented the public moves on. American culture, by contrast, values perfection and choice. It is a subtle difference between Brits and Americans but a notable one that partially explains the two cultures and why they aren't entirely congruent.