Time travel has been a fascinating subject for mankind for a very long time and I’m sure you have wondered what it would be like to live 1000 years in the past or the future. How different society was or will be compared to nowadays? How would it feel to be transported to a different era?

The good news is that Virtual Reality can provide a very immersive experience of time travel and we are going to dig into it here.

Human history can be separated in periods in many different ways. Depending on where you grew up I’m sure you will have been taught a different slicing of history to the one I’m listing below. I apologize for potentially flustering people as I decided here to separate history in the following way:

1. Prehistory
2. Bronze and Iron Age
3. Classical Antiquity
4. Middle Ages
5. Early Modern Period
6. Long Nineteenth Century 
7. Contemporary Period
8. The Future

If the slicing of history listed above doesn’t resonate with you, please take the time to define your own periods. It is important to feel a personal connection to historic periods before letting your mind wander in imagining and picturing what it would be like to live at a specific time in history. Once you are happy with your definition of historic periods and can picture each of these, please carry on reading.

Apart from the future, each of the periods listed above can be recreated in Virtual Reality more or less accurately based on the existing knowledge on historic details of each period. Of course, the more we travel back in time, the less details we have, in particular for the prehistoric period which, as its names states, took place before history started being recorded (in writing). But by working with historians and scientists and leveraging the amount of information that can be gathered from books and the Internet, the details of the day to day life can be implemented in an offline or online virtual world.

Concerning the matter of travelling into the future, it will rely on predictions based on the current scientific and political knowledge mainly and the further in the future we want to travel, the less accurate the prediction will be. Still, it can allow you to experience some amazing technology and pretty alien concepts. You can get an idea of the feeling by imagining experiencing technologies shown in Star Trek. This can be mind-boggling!

Obviously, books, films (“Back to the Future comes to mind”) and video games already provide food for the mind and enable you to experience partially what it would feel like to live at a specific time in history. However, a well-crafted VR experience can take this experience to a whole new level, as you then become the main actor and have to face decisions and consequences of your day to day actions. Current video games are the closest you can get to this VR experience right now, but VR provides a much more immersive experience with the strong feeling of presence.

This travel in time can not only improve your knowledge of history, but can teach you what it is like to live without electricity, for example, or in a world where catching any illness could kill you. The benefits in terms of empathy would in this particular case be limited, however they could provide a great feeling of gratitude that can increase your happiness and appreciation of the abundance around you.

Let’s now move to gender exploration, in the next post.