Introductory Questions
​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? ​
WSC 2025 kicks off by pulling us out of nostalgia and igniting a new future of possibilities. The feeling of time traveling and adjusting to a new environment is a common dilemma presented in many movies and books. Inevitably, the characters also find it challenging to cope with radical changes on the surface and also in the evolving values of humanity. However, invariably, they find that some things never change and stay true to themselves. ​​
​Steven Rogers is Captain America in the popular series Avengers, who fell into a deep sleep and survived being frozen due to the super soldier serum running through his veins. Even though he survived, but the theme is what's the price and can he survive and find meaning in the new world. ​ On the other hand, Anime character Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender from fell asleep for 100 years because he was frozen in a sphere of ice through a combination of airbending and waterbending. The Avatar State kept him alive, albeit not fully conscious, in the iceberg while the war raged on. He was discovered and freed by two teenage siblings from the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and her brother, Sokka. So, would any of you be up for cryonics (frozen so you can be resurrected in the future?)
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“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?
WSC 2025 kicks off by pulling us out of nostalgia and igniting a new future of possibilities. The feeling of time traveling and adjusting to a new environment is a common dilemma presented in many movies and books. Inevitably, the characters also find it challenging to cope with radical changes on the surface and also in the evolving values of humanity. However, invariably, they find that some things never change and stay true to themselves. ​​
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