You have probably seen this at the beginning of a movie:
I am always caught by surprise when the globe stops spinning, expecting to go further. Watching it closely, I realized why: it stops at the Americas. I grew up in Hong Kong, where world maps look like this:
What's special about it? The center of the map is the Pacific Ocean. In my mind, that is the focal point of the globe, so I felt unsatisfied when the Universal globe stops spinning at the Americas.
I found it ironic that the globe, being the obvious icon for a global society, is actually usually localized. And today I found a delightful case of a localized globe - the notification icon in the top right corner of Facebook:
I never paid much attention to it, but my friend Corey is visiting Sweden, and noticed that her icon changed from showing the Americas:
To Europe, Africa and Asia:
Very subtle, but very cool!