William Shakespeare once said, “All the world’s a stage. And all the men and women merely players.”

In his day, the majority of humanity experienced their stage from the perspective of the plot of land they farmed. A couple of hundred years later, the players found themselves in the cities where the stage was a factory floor. More recently, many of us found ourselves in some form of service industry performing for an audience of hungry and thirsty patrons who’d just come from a shopping spree at the mall.

The march of time, though, waits for no man or woman. Our stage is changing; it is transmogrifying.

With this change, our roles as players are going to once again be something quite different. This difference will be as significant to us as though Mr. Shakespeare had gone from witnessing his age to being teleported onto a jet flying from his merry-medieval England to 21st-century America from one day to the next.

Virtual Reality will be that disruptive. It is our new stage. And you are the player, the actor on that platform, an inhabitant of a new world. This alternative reality emerging from our imaginations is nothing less than a universe that will require our exploration. The difference with this age of discovery is that one need not be wealthy, an adventurer, or one of the lucky ones chosen to be an astronaut. All we must do is don a pair of VR glasses, have a powerful enough computer and download the app.

Some will say this will be an expensive proposition. Does anyone think it was cheap to go to the moon? Do you know that it typically costs more than $45,000 per person to go up Everest without a guarantee of reaching the top? Have you priced a penguin-watching trip in the Antarctic waters lately?

What is the value to us humans to see new things and have unimaginable experiences?

We are entering an age where almost anyone will be able to virtually participate in nearly any activity humans can dream of. The cost of entry is not free or cheap. But it’s never been free to enter the theater, eat a great meal, or travel the world. The difference is going to be that we are removing the barriers that have only allowed those of privilege to embark on humanity’s greatest adventures.