The Harari-Shupe Observation without Preons - a Glimpse of Physics to Come?

We argue that one has to distinguish between the Harari-Shupe model (HSM) and the Harari-Shupe observation (HSO). The former - in which quarks and leptons are viewed as composite objects built from confined fermionic subparticles (`rishons') - is known to be beset with many difficulties. The latter may be roughly defined as this part of the HSM that really works. We recall that the phase-space Clifford-algebra approach leads to the HSO without any of the HSM problems and discuss in some detail how this is achieved. The light which the phase-space-based view sheds on the HSO sets then a new direction along which the connection between space and particle properties could be studied and offers a glimpse into weird physics that probably lurks much deeper than the field-theoretical approach of the Standard Model.