I'm also reminded of the Ashton-Tate software package Framework, which is one of my favorites from the 1980s. It's what they used to call "integrated software", which was a package of several productivity applications: word processor, spreadsheet, maybe a communications program or database or graphing capability, bundled together and sold as a unit. Unlike, say, Microsoft Works or DeskMate, Framework featured powerful versions of these tools and the ability to create composite documents, as well as a programming language with Lisp-like semantics to automate workflows. Because of this, Ashton-Tate pitched Framework as an executive decision-making tool, which was quite a bit different from how competitor programs like Lotus 1-2-3 were marketed:
This insight helped me understand the mindset of the IBM executives, which I wouldn't have before; just dismissed it as wrongheaded pre-boomer silliness. The executives saw demeaning themselves with the scutwork of looking things up for oneself as an attack on their position, their dignity and worth as individuals, and the organization as a whole -- perhaps even society as a whole. Those filthy hippies with their (sissy voice) "collaborative work environments" and their "interactive terminals". They're working for the Reds, I tell ya, trying to unravel the nation from the inside!
I owe LeGuin a profound debt for opening my mind to mentalities vastly different to my own, yet still essential to the history of the computing world I live in.
Have you read Stranger In A Strange Land? The alien word "grok" from that book has a similar way of being useful, and that one actually managed to make it into general speech somehow - at least by hacker types. In the book it's an alien word that literally means "to drink", though it really means something like "attain a real understanding of."