Historically, it is 1024 which is 2^10. It's original context was a measure of the size of computer memory in a devise. Memory chips are based on powers of 2 (of course).
Progress is typically limited by the unreasonable stubbornness of older generations. You are following a long and petty human tradition.
Plate tectonics was widely derided by the old guard of geologists. The field had to wait until they mostly died off before it could fully embrace the notion and move forward. Same story with germ theory and doctors washing their hands after dissecting cadavers before delivering babies.
I guess refusing to use newer and more accurate SI units isn't nearly as egregious but nonetheless petty. Very very petty.
When Tanya Atwater published her seminal paper launching plate tectonics, we geologists were now aware of the pattern of magnetic anomalies paralleling mid-oceanic ridges and now aware of the layered structure of the earth. This information provided validation of her theory and explained that, while continents are too thin to move, they could move if they were "bonded" to part of the asthenosphere.
The "old guard" was right according to the best available information. When Atwater linked the two new bodies of information, plate tectonics swept away opposition of both the "old guard" and the "new".
Put differently, you don't know what you're talking about.
Wow, so much venom. My point about washing hands was correct. It also applies to quantum physics. And yes, there were old guard geologists that denied it to their death beds just as there were old guard that cling to sublumeniferous aether and the constancy of time long after Einstein published his seminal works.
The phenomenon within the scientific community is so common in fact, it has a pithy name: The Planck Principle
It's pretty fascinating and a great article. My tl;dr: it varies, you can never trust it unless it's specified in kibi/mebi/gibi/etc., in which case you know at least it's one camp and not the other.
