Word: symbolic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Nearly 30 years ago, IBM revolutionized the office workplace when it introduced the Selectric electric typewriter. The premier symbol of the high- tech office of the future, the Selectric used plug-in cartridges, instead of messy ink ribbons, and replaced the sliding carriage and keys with a rotating typing golf ball. Since 1961, IBM has sold some 13 million Selectrics, making it the best-selling machine in the company's 76-year history...
...corporate takeover. More important, some of the new owners are foreign oil companies. Texaco's refining and marketing operations in 26 Eastern and Gulf Coast states are now half-owned by the Saudi Arabian oil company Aramco. Venezuela's national petroleum company bought out Citgo. In Europe a new symbol has emerged: Q8. The homophonic logo representing Kuwait's oil company appears on the signs of 4,800 gasoline stations in Western Europe...
...Mandela can serve all those purposes, it is partly because for so long he remained an unknown quantity. Emerging from the enforced silence of a prison cell, he arrived in the U.S. more as a symbol of courage and hope than as a politician with well-known positions. Even when his positions were unequivocally stated, they were sometimes overlooked last week. New York Mayor David Dinkins could hail his guest as "a man of peace," a title that acknowledges Mandela's exemplary lack of bitterness toward his former captors, while sidestepping his refusal to disown violence as a means...
Tomorrow's Germans may not be "longing" for a nuclear status symbol any more than today's are. They may have followed the example of Japan, that other phoenix risen from the ashes of World War II, and learned to be an economic superpower without wanting, or even needing, commensurate military might. But like everyone else, the Germans will certainly want safety. They will want to know who is going to deter whatever threat they still feel from the missiles and bombers of others...
...what you think of as a bar. An Indian will "prepone" a meeting, and only if you're quick enough to calculate "postpone" in reverse have you any chance of showing up on time. Above all, as English has become a kind of prized commodity -- and a status symbol -- in many corners of the world, those of us born in possession of it are apt to feel as vulnerable as a bejeweled dowager in a dark back alleyway. There's always someone waiting to jump out and mug us with his English -- before we can try out our Bahasa Indonesia...