By: Emily Ao

If I were to accidentally be transported back in time, I don’t think I would survive at all. I believe that regardless of the time period, even if it was around 50 years back, any time period without the use of the Internet and social advancements would be the death of me.

These days, so many things revolve around using wireless connection. Even traditional activities are now doable using things like laptops and mobile devices (eg. homework, meetings). Because I was also born in the age where computing devices were already established, I don’t think I would be able to get used to life without it. This may affect older people differently (eg. if someone was born in an age where modern devices were created a few years after they were born).

I would also suffer from the kinds of racism in America’s past. Nowadays, racism towards Asians is still pretty prominent, but education in schools helps a lot. Back then, racism was probably very indirectly taught in schools instead of the opposite, and if you were a person of color, you would face regular instances of discrimination.

On the brighter side, it would be interesting to see a world where the environment isn’t being actively destroyed by society. It’d be nice to wake up to nice air quality without heaping waves of smoke and smog from factories. I understand that there were still factories and greenhouse gas producing tech back then, but they are surely not as bad as the ones we see today.

All in all, I feel like traveling back in time would be an interesting, new experience, but I would definitely not last.