WSC 26 Names and uh stuff
Frank Sinatra: Singer referenced for the idea of approaching an ending through his song “My Way.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: American writer often (mis)credited with the quote “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
Simba: Character from The Lion King, used to represent being in an in-between stage (not yet fully grown or in power).
“I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”: Song highlighting eagerness to grow up or reach the next stage of life.
Brad A. Myers: Computer science student who introduced early “percent-done” progress indicators in 1985, helping shape the modern progress bar.
Martin Luther King Jr.: Quoted for the line about “the arc of the moral universe” bending toward justice, used here to discuss the idea of social progress.
Theodore Parker: The earlier source of the “arc of the moral universe” idea that King popularized.
Will Crawford: Artist of the 1909 painting titled Surely the world is growing better, used as a prompt about whether the world is improving.
Namco developers: The team behind Ridge Racer, mentioned for adding an Easter egg to loading screens.
Benjamin Franklin + Leonardo Da Vinci: Mentioned as an early famous user of to-do lists,
Umberto Eco: Writer who said “The list is the origin of culture” and studied lists as a serious topic.
Oliver Burkeman: Associated with the idea of a “done list,” which shifts attention from unfinished tasks to completed ones.
Zeigarnik Effect: The tendency to remember unfinished tasks more strongly than completed ones.
Done list: A counteridea to the to-do list that records completed work and may reduce stress.
Practical lists: Functional lists used to organize tasks and actions.
Poetic lists: Lists valued for style, imagination, or expression rather than utility.
Lists and culture: The broader idea that lists shape how people think, remember, and organize life.
Elizabeth I: Used as an example of delaying succession by not naming an heir.
Martin Luther King Jr.: Quoted for the “arc of the moral universe” idea, which the text contrasts with uncertainty about progress
Caretaker government: A temporary neutral government that runs a country during the election period.
Lame duck: A leader whose power weakens as their term nears its end, especially when they cannot run again.
Succession secrecy: The idea of not revealing the next leader until the current one leaves office or dies.
Doomsday Clock: A symbolic measure of how close humanity is to catastrophe.
The Millerites: A religious movement tied to the 1844 apocalyptic prediction.
Wodziwob: Associated with visions in 1869 that fueled end-times beliefs.
Hon-Ming Chen: Linked to a 1988 doomsday prediction.
Mayan Apocalypse: The widely discussed 2012 end-of-the-world prediction.
The Y2K bug: A computer-related panic around the year 2000.
The Large Hadron Collider: Falsely linked by some people to apocalyptic fears in 2008.
Albrecht Dürer: Created The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Sandro Botticelli: Painted The Mystical Nativity, with apocalyptic religious imagery.
Michelangelo: Painted The Last Judgment.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Painted The Triumph of Death.
Thomas Cole: Painted The Course of Empire: Destruction.
John Martin: Created The Great Day of His Wrath.
Otto Dix: Known for World War I prints showing destruction and trauma.
Viktor Schreckengost: Created Apocalypse ‘42.
Harry Louis Freund: Made another Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse work.
Saby Menyhei: Produced The Last of Us season 1 concept art.
Kevin Sherwood & James McCawley: Associated with the song “Where Are We Going?”
Olivier Messiaen: Composed Quartet for the End of Time.
Black Sabbath: Performed “Electric Funeral.”
R.E.M.: Performed “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”
Leonardo da Vinci: made Mona Lisa versions to show how a work can evolve from draft to finished form.
Vincent van Gogh: Cited through multiple versions of Bedroom in Arles, showing how artists revise the same subject.
Edvard Munch: His Despair and The Scream illustrate how an image can develop from an earlier version into a more iconic final work.
Henri Matisse: Dance (I) and Dance (II) show a dramatic shift in style and simplification.
The Beatles: Strawberry Fields Forever.” - about drugs
Lin-Manuel Miranda: The demo “This One’s Mine.” - Hamilton
Sophia Anne Caruso: the demo “Dead Mom.”
EJAE: “Golden.”
La Sagrada Familia: A famously long-running basilica construction project in Spain.
Nusantara Capital City: Indonesia’s planned new capital, used as an example of a major delayed project.
Ryugyong Hotel: An unfinished skyscraper in North Korea.
Wonderland Amusement Park: A Chinese project that remained unfinished.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport: A well-known delayed airport project in Germany.
Milan Cathedral: A cathedral associated with extremely long construction and finishing work.
Crazy Horse Memorial: A South Dakota monument that has taken decades and remains unfinished.
Frederick Taylor: “the one best way” - Taylorism - four principles
The Egyptian builders: used Gantt charts
The Romans: Referenced for their road-building and large-scale coordination.
Max Weber’s bureaucracy: A formal system of rules, hierarchy, and procedures.
Ford assembly line: A mass-production model built around division of labor and standardization.
Total Quality Management (TQM): A broad approach to improving quality across an organization.
Hawthorne Effect: People change behavior when they know they are being observed.
Hofstadter’s Law: Tasks always take longer than expected, even when you account for the delay.
90-90 Rule: The idea that the first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the other 90%.
Conway’s Law: Systems reflect the communication structure of the organization that built them.
Putt’s Law: Technology often gets controlled by people who don’t fully understand it.
Illich’s Law: After a point, productivity and attention decline with too much work.
Laborit’s Law: People tend to choose tasks that feel easiest or most rewarding first.
Brooks’ Law: Adding more people to a late project can make it later.
Pareto principle: The idea that 80% of results often come from 20% of effort.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect who imagined cars integrated into homes and helped shape ideas about modern residential design.
The Jetsons: Fictional family used to represent futuristic moving sidewalks and automated urban life.
Dubai: a place with very few sidewalks, showing how walking infrastructure varies by city.
New York: a sidewalk environment that is active, social, and full of street life.
Temple Street Parking Garage: A New Haven parking structure noted for its architectural interest.
Lego Parking House: A parking building in Billund, Denmark, presented as an unusually designed lot.
Parc des Celestins: A parking facility in Lyon, France.
Michigan Theater: A Detroit site where a theater became a parking lot.
Garagenatelier Car Park: A parking structure in Herdern, Switzerland.
9th Avenue Parkade: A Calgary parking building discussed as a candidate for future reuse.
Robie House: One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous homes, used to illustrate his design principles.
Los Angeles Grand Park: Example of turning former parking lots into a public gathering place.
Liminal space: A threshold or in-between area, like sidewalks or parking lots, that is often overlooked.
Thomas Edison: a symbol of invention and hands-on experimentation.
Sarah Boone: Inventor mentioned as someone whose work connects to practical prototyping.
Elon Musk: Tesla’s humanoid robot prototype and staged demonstrations.
Mechanical Turk: A famous “chess-playing machine” that was actually a hoax.
Fireflies.ai: the early service depended on humans behind the scenes.
Sketches: Early visual ideas for a product.
Storyboarding: Planning a process or user experience in sequence.
Paper prototypes: Simple physical mockups used for testing ideas cheaply.
Low vs. high fidelity: The difference between rough, simple prototypes and polished ones.
Wireframing: A structural layout for an app or website.
Mockup: A visual model that shows how a product might look.
Proof of concept: A demonstration that an idea can work in principle.
User testing: Observing people using a prototype to learn what works.
Minimum viable product: A basic version of a product with just enough features to launch.
Minimum marketable feature: The smallest feature set that is still worth selling.
Vibe coding: Using AI to generate software from prompts instead of writing code manually.
Wizard of Oz testing: Pretending a product is automated when humans are secretly doing the work.
Fake demos: Staged or embellished product demonstrations.
Human-in-the-loop services: Products marketed as AI-driven but actually supported by people.
“Fake it ’til you make it”: The business practice of presenting something as more complete than it really is, with the hope that it later becomes real.
Doorway effect: The tendency to forget something after moving through a doorway or entering a new space.
Immanuel Kant: Philosopher whose idea of beauty helps explain why liminal spaces can feel compelling even when they lack an obvious function.
J.M.W. Turner: Painter of Rain, Steam, and Speed, showing movement and transition.
William Powell Frith: Painter of The Railway Station, a crowded in-between travel space.
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Artist of Picture of the Railroad at Takanawa.
Claude Monet: Painter of Gare Saint-Lazare, a station scene full of steam and motion.
Steve McCurry: Photographer of Train Station, Agra, 1983.
Richard Artschwager: Artist of Six in Four.
Paul Gauguin: Painter of Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
René Magritte: Painter of The Treachery of Images.
Salvador Dalí: Painter of The Persistence of Memory.
Andrew Wyeth: Painter of Christina’s World.
M. C. Escher: Artist of Ascending and Descending.
Gregory Crewdson: Photographer of Beneath the Roses.
Camille Seamn: Artist of The Distant is Imminent.
Samuel Beckett: Playwright of Waiting for Godot.
Pablo Neruda: Poet of “Keeping Still.”
Philippe Orreindy: Creator of I’ll Wait for the Next One...
Marcel Aymé: Writer of “The Man Who Could Walk through Walls.”
Amor Towles: Author of A Gentleman in Moscow.
Brian Eno: Composer of Ambient 1: Music for Airports.
Hiroshi Yoshimura: Composer of Music for Nine Postcards.
Max Richter: Composer of Sleep.
The Backrooms: Found-footage-style internet horror that makes liminal spaces feel eerie.
The Stanley Parable: Game that uses strange transitional spaces and uncertainty.
The Backrooms-inspired game: A game built around similar uncanny, in-between environments.
Found footage: A style that can make in-between spaces feel unsettling.
Non-places: Places like airports and waiting rooms that are meant for transit more than belonging.
Music for airports: A phrase associated with music that suits transitional or waiting spaces.
Britney Spears: “not a girl, not yet a woman,” a pop-culture expression of adolescence.
Rumi: Poet whose work reflects on death as transformation.
John Donne: Poet who treats death as something that should not be feared.
Alfred Lord Tennyson: Poet of Ulysses, which frames life as ongoing striving.
Emily Dickinson: Poet of Because I could not stop for Death, which personifies death as a companion.
Rabindranath Tagore: Poet whose Gitanjali reflects on mortality and spiritual transition.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Composer of the 15th Symphony movement referenced here.
Thich Nhat Hanh: Buddhist teacher and poet focused on interconnectedness and presence.
David Berman: Writer of the deathbed letter poem.
Linkin Park: Band referenced through “In the End.”
Gwendolyn Brooks: Poet of We Real Cool, about youth and rebellion.
Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve: Writer of The Medicine Bag.
Carol Ann Duffy: Poet of In Mrs. Tilscher’s Class.
Joss Whedon: Creator of Where Do We Go From Here?.
Karen Russell: Writer of Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.
Ruth B: Singer of “Lost Boy.”
Major Jackson: Poet of Let Me Begin Again.
Adolescence: The transition period between childhood and adulthood.
Teenager: A relatively modern social category, distinct from the broader biological stage of adolescence.
Prefrontal cortex: Brain region involved in planning, judgment, and impulse control.
Neural pruning: The brain’s process of trimming unused connections during development.
Risk-taking: Common adolescent behavior linked to brain development and social factors.
Neophilia: Attraction to novelty and new experiences.
Differentiation: The process of becoming more distinct as an individual.
Adolescence: The transition period between childhood and adulthood.
Teenager: A relatively modern social category, distinct from the broader biological stage of adolescence.
Prefrontal cortex: Brain region involved in planning, judgment, and impulse control.
Neural pruning: The brain’s process of trimming unused connections during development.
Risk-taking: Common adolescent behavior linked to brain development and social factors.
Neophilia: Attraction to novelty and new experiences.
Differentiation: The process of becoming more distinct as an individual.
Bar and Bat Mitzvahs: Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies.
Walkabout: A traditional journey associated with transition and maturity.
Khatam al-Quran: A ceremonial milestone tied to completing the Quran.
Debuts: Social introductions into adulthood in some cultures.
High school graduation: A secular milestone often treated like a rite of passage.
Driver’s license: A practical marker of increasing independence.
First paycheck: A sign of economic adulthood.
National service: A formal duty that can signify adult responsibility.
Voting: A civic marker of adulthood.
Moving out: A practical transition into adult independence.
Adulting: Turning adulthood into a verb, suggesting it is something performed rather than simply reached.
Rites of passage vs. secular milestones: The difference between culturally sacred transitions and practical life transitions.
Adulthood as performance: The idea that growing up may be more like learning a role than arriving at a destination.
Life and death as liminal states: The final section treats death as another threshold or passage.
Christopher Columbus: Used as an example of European exploration into the unknown, though the text frames that exploration critically as colonial expansion.
Steven Spielberg: Director of The Terminal, noted for adapting a real airport-limbo story into a film.
Mehran Karimi Nasser: The real-life traveler whose situation inspired The Terminal.
Edward Snowden: Mentioned as a modern example of someone caught in airport limbo.
Compass: The key navigational tool that helped Europeans cross the seas.
Astrolabe: Early instrument used to measure stars and position.
Sextant: Later navigation tool for measuring celestial angles.
Log tables and ephemerides: Mathematical aids for navigation.
Log and line: Early method for estimating ship speed.
Chronometer: Precise clock that helped determine longitude.
Latitude and longitude: The coordinate system used to fix a position on Earth.
Magnetoreception: Animals’ ability to sense Earth’s magnetic field.
Cryptochromes: Light-sensitive proteins linked to magnetic sensing in some animals.
Olfactory navigation: Navigation by smell.
Echolocation: Navigation by reflected sound.
Zugunruhe: Migratory restlessness in animals.
Constant frequency and frequency modulation: Sound patterns used in animal navigation and communication.
Sunlight polarization: A cue some animals use for orientation.
Spatial memory: Remembering locations and routes.
Indigo bunting: Bird example for celestial and magnetic navigation.
Dung beetle: Known for navigating with the Milky Way.
Honeybees: Use landmarks and spatial cues.
Homing pigeons: Classic example of animal navigation.
Sea turtles: Use geomagnetic cues to return to nesting sites.
Desert ants: Navigate using path integration.
Monarch butterfly: Mentioned as a long-distance migrator.
Humpback whale: Another example of a long-distance migrating animal.
Polynesian wayfinders: Seafarers who navigated without instruments using stars, swells, and wildlife.
Moana’s ancestors: Popular-culture reference to Polynesian navigation knowledge.
Inuit navigators: Use the sky and environmental markers in Arctic travel.
Vikings: Cited as possibly using legendary or debated navigation methods.
The St. Louis: A refugee ship carrying Jewish passengers denied entry in multiple countries during World War II.
Refugees and asylum seekers: Central figures in the text’s discussion of borders and humanitarian limits.
Immigrants: Used broadly to explore thresholds, belonging, and exclusion.
Emma Lazarus: Wrote “The New Colossus,” associated with welcoming immigrants.
Adrienne Rich: Wrote “Prospective Immigrants Please Note.”
Marilyn Chin: Wrote “We Are Americans Now, We Live in the Tundra.”
Adrian Castro: Wrote “The Sound of One Immigrant Clapping.”
Richard Blanco: Wrote “Mother Country.”
Frida Kahlo: Her painting The Bus is used as an image of migration and social crossing.
Jacob Lawrence: His Migration series depicts movement, displacement, and Black migration.
Led Zeppelin: “Immigrant Song” evokes conquest and displacement.
Fiddler on the Roof: “Far From the Home I Love” reflects departure and exile.
Genesis: “Illegal Alien” addresses immigration through pop music.
Brendan Graham: Wrote “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears.”
Kovi Konowiecki: Photographer of Borderlands.
Los Tigres del Norte: “Somos Mas Americanos” reflects immigrant identity and belonging.
Fog of World: App that hides unfamiliar map areas to recreate uncertainty and discovery.
Bilbo Baggins: Fictional character used to suggest that leaving home is risky and uncertain.
Frodo: Bilbo’s nephew, the one being advised about the dangers of travel.
Du Fu: Chinese poet whose “Travelling Again” reflects movement and displacement.
William Shakespeare: Poet of Sonnet 50, which uses the image of travel as emotional burden.
John Masefield: Poet of Sea Fever, expressing longing for movement and the sea.
Carl Sandburg: Poet of Window, connected to seeing the world in motion.
Robert Frost: Poet of The Road Not Taken, one of the best-known poems about choice and travel.
W. B. Yeats: Poet of Sailing to Byzantium, about leaving one stage of life for another.
Rustu Onur: Poet of The Journey.
Czesław Miłosz: Poet of This Only.
Richard Russo: Writer of Just Drive.
Rita Dove: Poet of Vacation.
Bertha Benz: Made the first long-distance automobile journey, helping launch road travel history.
Nat King Cole: Singer of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.”
Edward Hopper: Painter of Western Motel.
Edward Ruscha: Artist of Standard Station.
Willie Nelson: Singer of “On the Road Again.”
David Hockney: Artist of Pearblossom Highway.
Tom Cochrane: Singer of “Life Is a Highway.”
Bic Runga: Singer of “Drive.”
Norah Jones: Singer of “Come Away with Me.”
William Least-Heat Moon: Writer of Blue Highways, a classic road-trip travelogue
Macadam: Road-building method using layered crushed stone.
Pavement: Surface layer of a road.
Asphalt: Common modern road surface material.
Corduroy road: Road made from logs laid side by side, especially for wet terrain.
Gallery road: A road or passage built along a cliff or slope.
Holloway: Sunken lane formed by erosion and long use.
Ridgeway: Road or trail running along a ridge.
Milestones: Markers showing distance along a road.
Trackway: Early path or route used by travelers.
Desire paths: Unplanned shortcuts created by repeated human use.
Stroads: Hybrid road-street forms criticized as unsafe and inefficient.
Route 66: Iconic American road, often called the “Mother Road.”
Motels: Car-oriented lodging developed for road travelers.
Solar roadways: Roads designed to generate solar power.
Piezoelectric materials: Materials that generate electricity from pressure.
Self-healing asphalt: Asphalt designed to repair cracks automatically.
Traveling salesman problem: The challenge of finding the shortest route through multiple points.
Vector-based navigation: Navigation based on direction and distance.
Explore-exploit problem: Balancing the search for new routes with sticking to known ones.
Route elasticity: How flexible a route is when conditions change.
Braess’s Paradox: Adding road capacity can sometimes make traffic worse.
Dead reckoning: Estimating position from a known starting point and movement.
Steiner Tree Problem: Finding the most efficient way to connect points with minimal total length.
Hotels: Modern accommodations for travelers, distinct from earlier inns and post houses because they developed more standardized service, privacy, and commercial scale.
Inns: Older lodging places that offered food and rest for travelers along routes.
Post houses: Stopping points tied to mail and horse changes, not primarily leisure lodging.
Grand Tour: The elite European travel tradition that became a model for modern tourism.
Tourism: Travel for leisure rather than migration or business.
Golden Age of Travel: The nostalgic idea that older travel was more elegant and comfortable than today.
Tourist misbehavior: The idea that people may act worse while on holiday than they would at home.
Entrepôts: Market towns or ports where goods are stored and re-shipped rather than consumed locally.
Waystations: Intermediate stops along a trade route.
Free-trade zones: Areas with reduced customs duties to encourage commerce.
Transshipment: Moving goods from one vehicle or route to another.
Caravanserai: Inns or lodging stations along trade routes, especially in Asia and the Middle East.
Silk Road: Major historic trade network connecting East and West.
Piraeus: Ancient Greek port near Athens.
Tyrus: Ancient port city, important in Mediterranean trade.
Lothal: Ancient Indus Valley port and trade center.
Carthage: Powerful ancient North African trading city.
Shimoda & Hakodate: Japanese port cities tied to opening trade and exchange.
Malacca: Strategic Southeast Asian trading hub.
Istanbul: Historic crossroads between Europe and Asia.
Chicago: Modern transport and trade hub in the U.S.
Hong Kong: Major modern port and entrepôt.
Neil Armstrong: Apollo 11 astronaut quoted on how prediction is often too optimistic in the short term and too conservative in the long term.
Nikola Tesla: Inventor who predicted worldwide wireless communication and is linked here to the unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower.
George Mallory: Explorer famous for saying “Because it’s there” about climbing Everest.
The presidents of China and Russia: Mentioned in connection with life-extension ambitions and organ transplants.
Google researchers: Referenced through the 2019 quantum supremacy announcement.
Large language model developers: Implicitly referenced through discussion of AI-generated text and AGI.
Fusion power: Long-promised clean energy source that remains “almost there.”
Cure for cancer: Used as an example of a transformative medical breakthrough that is always anticipated.
Graphene: A much-hyped material with huge promise but uneven real-world impact.
Flying cars: Classic future-tech symbol that keeps being predicted but not broadly delivered.
Virtual reality: A technology repeatedly said to be on the verge of mainstream breakthrough.
Nanotechnology: Promising but still limited in many applications.
Space elevator: A far-future engineering concept.
Food pills: A futuristic replacement for ordinary meals, often predicted but not realized.
Artificial general intelligence (AGI): AI with broad human-like reasoning across contexts.
Quantum supremacy: The point at which a quantum computer outperforms classical ones at a task.
Q-Day: The feared future moment when quantum computers can break much of current encryption.
Digital immortality: The idea of preserving a person’s mind or identity digitally.
Cryonics: Preserving bodies or brains at low temperatures in hopes of future revival.
Telomere extension: A longevity strategy aimed at slowing cellular aging.
Cellular reprogramming: Resetting cells to a younger state.
Cellular rejuvenation: General approaches to restoring cell function.
Senotherapeutics: Treatments that target aging or senescent cells.
Organoids: Miniature lab-grown organs used in research.
Bioprinting: Printing biological tissue or organs layer by layer.
Plasma transfusion: A longevity-related idea that draws on blood-factor research.
Caloric restriction: Reduced calorie intake studied for possible lifespan effects.
Wardenclyffe Tower: Tesla’s failed wireless communication project.
Kola Superdeep Borehole: A Soviet scientific drilling project that became a symbol of pushing physical limits.
Zeno: Ancient Greek philosopher known for paradoxes of motion, especially the dichotomy paradox.
Francis Fukuyama: Political thinker associated with “The End of History,” the idea that liberal democracy had triumphed.
Sunk cost fallacy: The tendency to keep going with something because of past investment, even when quitting would be wiser.
Zeno’s dichotomy paradox: The idea that motion seems impossible because you must cross infinitely many halfway points.
Paradoxes of motion: Zeno’s broader set of arguments about movement, time, and infinity.
The End of History: The claim that liberal democracy would become the final political form.
World War I as “the War to End All Wars”: The hopeful idea that one war would end all future wars.
Ambiguous endings: Fictional endings that leave outcomes unresolved.
Definitive endings: Clear, closed conclusions with no uncertainty.
Epilogue: A final section that may extend a story after its main ending.
Stargate Universe: Used as an example of a story ending in unresolved ambiguity because of cancellation.
The Sopranos: Famous for its abrupt cut-to-black ending.
Life of Pi: Leaves room for interpretation about what really happened.
Blade Runner / Deckard: The “may or may not be a replicant” example.
Harry Potter epilogue: Cited as an ending some readers think went on too long.
Science/tech
Progress bars and interface design.
Prototypes, drafts, demos, and product testing.
AI, vibe coding, AGI, quantum computing, and “almost there” technologies.
Navigation technology and animal navigation.
Roads, transport infrastructure, parking, sidewalks, and moving sidewalks.
Project management tools and methods.
Rehearsal, memory, patience, and psychology of waiting.
Lifespan extension, neuroscience, adolescence, and brain development.
Environmental and climate thresholds, disaster prediction, and collapse.
Scientific prediction, failed forecasts, and future technologies.
History
Ancient and modern roads, Roman roads, trade routes, and the history of travel.
Hotels, inns, post houses, motels, and the rise of tourism.
Grand tours, leisure travel, and the expansion of tourism.
Colonial exploration, navigation, and maritime innovation.
Project management history from pyramids to Gantt charts and scientific management.
Apocalyptic predictions, world-ending panics, and historical doomsday movements.
Teenagers as a historically modern social category.
Adolescence, rites of passage, and coming-of-age transitions.
Caretaker governments, lame ducks, succession, and political endings.
Unfinished megaprojects and delayed infrastructure.
Social sciences
Human behavior around endings, progress, impatience, and waiting.
Decision-making, sunk cost fallacy, quitting, and patience.
Social norms around adulthood, “adulting,” and rites of passage.
Immigration, refugees, borders, asylum, and liminal identity.
Tourism behavior, tourist misbehavior, and cultural travel patterns.
Project management as organizational behavior.
Management theory, Taylorism, bureaucracy, and labor monitoring.
Urban planning, desire paths, stroads, parking, sidewalks, and public space.
Societal progress indicators like GDP, Gini, HDI, happiness index, and passport index.
Cultural ideas of progress, civilization, and the goal of society.
Literature/media
Endings in film, TV, books, and games.
Ambiguous or unresolved endings in fiction.
Stories about thresholds, liminal states, and in-between spaces.
Teen and coming-of-age literature and poetry.
Travel writing, road-trip narratives, and migration poetry.
Immigrant experience in poetry and storytelling.
Apocalyptic and end-of-world narratives in literature and media.
Demos, unfinished songs, and musical-theatre outtakes.
Found-footage horror, eerie games, and liminal internet culture.
Road-trip songs, travel songs, and media about motion and departure.
Art/music
Drafts, sketches, demos, and the evolution of works from rough to finished.
Comparison of different versions of paintings and songs.
Liminal and transitional imagery in visual art.
Apocalyptic art across Renaissance and modern periods.
Ambient music and music for waiting spaces.
Road-trip music, travel songs, and movement-themed art.
Migration-themed visual art and music.
Beauty, aesthetics, and the appeal of in-between spaces.
Artistic depictions of youth, death, and transformation.
Special area
The World Scholars Cup-style obsession with thresholds, transitions, and “are we there yet?” thinking.
Liminality as a recurring special-area lens: in-between states, unfinished journeys, and endings that are not fully endings.
The idea of progress versus completion, and whether “there” is ever truly reached.
Big human questions about purpose, destination, and the meaning of arrival.
The tension between journey and end, waiting and doing, becoming and being.
Progress as both a literal and metaphorical concept across life, society, art, and technology.