Pros and Cons of Time Travel

In movies and books, the concept of time and the significance of the individual is frequently explored. If time travel were possible, it would be interesting to see how much like it is in movies. Does one person's presence (or lack thereof) really make that much of a difference in the world like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life or Marty McFly in Back to the Future? Or will the power of one person have little effect on the outcome of history like Michael Crichton's theory from Timeline? Will the power of time travel be used to save humankind and bring back long extinct species like in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? Will musicians of the present be inspired by musician from the future (Taylor, it's your cousin, Marvin Swift. Ima let you finish, but listen to this!)? Only time will tell.

As awesome as time travel may seem in movies, it also has it's negative side effects. I learned from the book Timeline that traveling too many times through quantum wormholes can lead to transcription errors where your body parts do not fit back together properly. Nothing could be worse than having your body malfunction on you when you are stuck in the middle ages and they think you are a witch for having six toes or something. Also as awesome as the effects of time travel were for the McFly family in Back to the Future, nobody ever hears Biff's side of the story. It isn't fair that someone else can be so successful and others have to suffer just because they don't have a crazy mad scientist friend (Seriously, why was a guitar playing, skateboarding teenager like Marty McFly hanging around a crazy old guy like Doc Brown in the first place? Hmm.). Once this technology becomes available to the public, there is no telling how many times history will have to be rewritten. Like Dr. Seuss' Sneetches, after a while, nobody will remember how things were before and the world will be in chaos.

The logistics of time travel still needs to be worked out and laws would have to be passed to regulate it once time machines became available to the general public, but the idea of it still seems pretty cool. It is something to think about, but like I said before, only time will tell.