Introductory Questions

WSC Prep

Rip Van Winkle slept for twenty years, Steve Rogers for seventy, Aang for a hundred—in each case, with remarkably little impact on their health. (Rip Van Winke did grow some facial hair.) Imagine that you went through something similar and woke up in the year 2120 (albeit with neither superpowers nor supercharged follicles.) How quickly do you think you’d notice you were in the future? Would beds feel different? Would chairs be strange shapes? Would there be funky new food in the fridge? Would there still be a Global Round in Bangkok? Outside your home, would you encounter a strange new society or one roughly like our own? Or would you encounter no society at all, just a picturesque (and probably terrifying) post-apocalyptic landscape? [LIT, SPC]

The first portion of this year’s curriculum is already an intriguing one. There’s a lot to unpack with time-travel shenanigans, especially if they’re not “true time-travel”. Without further ado, let’s get started!

Note all characters here are fictional.

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Rip Van Winkle is the main character of a Danish-American short story of the same name. Written by Washington Irving, also Danish-American, the story follows Rip as he falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains (New York), only to wake up 20 years later.

To provide context, Rip’s story is set in early colonial America, where his lifestyle largely involves avoiding as much work as possible (sound familiar? xd). After meeting a group of mysterious men in the mountains, where he intoxicates himself, he ends up falling asleep. Through the 20 years he was sleeping, the American Revolution happens.

(He also ends up growing a large, white beard.)

Interestingly, this story comes out of a spark of ingenuity from the author, a man who had in fact never been to the Catskill mountains. It comes from a thought brought up in a nostalgic conversation about their past in the region.

Below: An illustration of Rip Van Winkle

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Steve Rogers, known by more as his alias Captain America, has a canonical instance of being frozen for decades. I’m no MCU fan, but I do have the power of Wikipedia to explain the context :p

As explained in his backstory, Steve was a super-soldier in WWII, having taken a serum which provided him with increased athleticism, endurance, and speed. In a fight with the Nazi organization Hydra, Steve sacrifices himself, ultimately crashing into the arctic and entering a suspended-animation state for ~70 years. He is eventually revived by S.H.I.E.L.D, America’s government protection agency. A large part of his character arc revolves around trying to come to terms with the fact he’s traveled 70 years into the future and lost basically all his family since.

(There’s a slightly different story in the comic books, but the general information is the same)

Below: Steve Rogers (better known as Captain America)

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Aang is the protagonist of the popular anime The Last Airbender.

Born into a world where the 4 nations (Earth, Fire, Water, and Air) were in balance, Aang learns he is the incarnation of the “Avatar” (seemingly some sort of deity). Being 12 at the time, he was overwhelmed with this news, running away and accidentally trapping himself in an iceberg within a storm by instinct. Upon being woken up by members of the Water nation, he learns of his century-long slumber (What do you mean sleeping for 100 years is not a typical activity for 12 years olds??). During this period, the 4 nations had gone out of balance (the hundred year war), especially with the Fire nation declaring war against the others to solidify their dominance and mitigate the risk of the Avatar.

(Apologies to the Avatar: TLA fans for possibly butchering the story :p)

Below: Aang (Avatar: TLA)

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Reading over this, I realize how bland my descriptions are. I swear these characters are more interesting than my quickly-written 30 second excerpts!

“Slice of life” is more than a film genre: research everyday life in the years 1825 and 1925 to learn more about how much things changed between those two years and between 1925 and now. Has the rate of change in your community slowed down or sped up–or does it depend on what you’re looking at? [LIT, HIS]

The Slice of Life film genre is exactly what it sounds like: all media which falls in this category depicts holistic, realistic scenarios in peoples lives. First popularized as a criticism of certain TV dramas in the 1950s, a “Slice of Life” media is one with notably little plot, character development, and timeline. Rather, it depicts seemingly arbitrary and “realistic” portrayals of the lives of its referenced people, most significant for having their so-called “open endings”. The aim of this genre largely lies in letting audiences make their own interpretations of characters.

A different subsection of this genre exists in anime/manga, where a story revolves around characters in relatable, everyday scenarios. These usually focus on romantic relationships set in place at high schools or workplaces. The subsection of slice of life is sometimes criticized for being “too drama-filled”, bordering on the line of being realistic.

Funnily enough, there’s a subgenre of Japanese Slice of life (so a subgenre of a subgenre of a genre!) which eliminates the romantic attraction present in most Japanese Slice of Life films. This subgenre, commonly titled “air-type”, is akin to typical slice of life films; both of these typically focus on genuine, unfiltered development of characters*.

*If AI detector-flagged writing competitions existed, I’d be amazing at them :p

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As for developments between 1825 and 1925, this is largely an open topic. I’ll highlight a few interesting things which happened in this time period:

The creation of the Telegraph, Phone, and Planes

The slavery abolition act and American civil war

The development of the theory of evolution

The second industrial revolution

The development of train and car industries

Sadly, I couldn’t find a person who lived during this period to interview about their experiences. Transcripts of interviews of general people at the time largely don’t exist either, as interviews only began in 1836 (You will not need to remember this date, though the history of interviews was in the past year’s curriculum!)

A hundred years is a long time. What if the same thing happened, but you woke up (like Rip Van Winkle!) only 20 years in the future? What do you imagine the year 2045 will be like for students like you? What are the easiest things to predict–and what are the hardest? [INT]

This is purely discussional. Feel free to discuss this with teammates.

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Historically, future technology has been ridiculously difficult to predict. I’ll reference some predictions by a French artist in the 1900s, Jean Marc Cote, to show how different future technologies can be from what we believe they will be. He did predict some things correctly, but the aesthetic of the machines he predicted were… not close at all.

I found it surprising that many people didn’t foresee the possibility of ChatGPT’s existence. The technology has been there for a while! (It just wasn’t successfully commercialized until then.) This really does underscore how no matter how advanced we are, the future always holds things which don’t even fit in our scope of imagination.

I see 20 years from now to be filled with holographic devices and cloud-computing dominance. 20 years from now could also be societal ruin. Maybe aliens will visit and give us immortality technology. There’s really no knowing what could happen!

Some things catch fire literally, others metaphorically—and the fires that most interest us are those happening for at least the second time. Without reading the rest of this outline, brainstorm with your friends what it could mean for something to re-ignite, and how different that is than igniting in the first place. When is it better for something to burn twice? And is there a difference between burning up, burning down, and burning with? [INT]

There’s some science to fire which can be explored in regards to this paragraph. The science of literal fire is expanded on later in the curriculum, so keep your eyes open!

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Aindra (of BISV): if you’re reading this, you probably know exactly what I’m thinking- at least in regards to this paragraph. I shalln’t reveal this directly in text, but I feel compelled to mention a strong desire to talk about… something specific. Perhaps I’ll grow out of this interest eventually.

Maybe, one day, I’ll reflect on this paragraph with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia. What I’m writing right now seems like something I’ll look back at in 10 years time, thinking: Was I really that bad at writing?

Shoot– nostalgia was a 2024 topic– whoopsies!

There’s no denying that some things excite our passions. For some of you, maybe, World Scholar’s Cup is that kind of cause; others of you might thrill to the fight against global climate change, a big boss in the Forgotten Land, or the harmful impacts of social media. But what would it take to have your feelings about something (or somewhere or someone) re-ignited? Under what circumstances does a person leave a project, then return to it with new zeal? [INT]

The “Forgotten Land” described above can refer to many things, though I think it’s a reference to Kirby and the Forgotten Land. In brief, very concise words, this game follows Kirby finding an abandoned civilization dubbed “the new world”. I doubt WSC will test this, though the themes of this game do match futurism (cloning, space-time rifts, all that juicy stuff)!

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The last sentence here reminds me of Steve Jobs– he was fired from Apple, only to be rehired later on. It’s not an exact match of the description, but it’s pretty close!

Not long ago, the future beckoned with open arms. Many people at the beginning of the 20th century–and even at its conclusion!–were certain that social and technological progress would continue endlessly, that there was a kind of Moore’s Law for everything. (At least one influential thinker still believes this.) Consider the musical selection “Counting Up to Twenty” as just one example of this boundless optimism. In those not-so-long-ago times, forecasts for the future were exuberant—and sometimes even exuberantly dull. How do you see the future, and how does your view compare to that of the older people in your life? [SOC, ART]