Why I hope Time Travel is never possible

"Skeptics said the same about Nuclear fission, and look how well that turned out!"

Humanity has always been a well of creativity. We differ from other animals, not in our ability or physicality. In ways, some animals are keener and smarter than we ever will be. We differ because we have a deep, unsatisfied need within us. A need to explore the world and understand it.

We looked at the night sky and named far-away points of light. We looked at our rivers and understood seasons. We touched gunpowder and sculpted the surface of our planet, quite literally. But one thing that has been consistent is not only our ability to improve, but also our ability to improve exponentially. And that last part is what should concern us. Let's try to break it down by assigning Maximum Impact of a technology on people when wielded both positively and negatively.

Fire
This was probably the first technology that we understood. When harnessed well, it could feed a small group of people.

Maximum Positive Impact ~ 20 people (Cooking, scaring away wild animals, campfires, etc.)

Maximum Negative Impact ~ 50 people (Making sharper weapons and arrows, lighting homes on fire, etc.)

Agriculture
Although we don't consider agriculture a technology, it changed human lives in profound ways. Allowing bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle down in one small area and cultivate their own food and be in complete control of their own food supplies.

Maximum Positive Impact ~ 100 - 1000 people. Large-scale farms weren't a reality until around ten thousand years ago. But, previously, the food produced on small farms could feed a small town or a village easily. This allowed groups of humans to coexist in one place, which was never possible before the advent of agriculture because a large population of humans in one area would make the hunting of local wildlife and gathering of resources unsustainable. So tribes lived a largely isolated and nomadic life.

Maximum Negative Impact ~ There were maybe no direct consequences of agriculture on people. But since it enabled the concentration of large populations of people, it marked the beginning of large civilizations to flourish and thrive, while also sparking the possibility of creating an army of a scale never witnessed before by man. Effectively, roles were dealt out to people. To put it simply, farmers created food and armies were fed and sent out to war.

Gunpowder
The history of gunpowder is a long and convoluted one that will take us across many continents and countries -- China, Southern India, Europe -- but let’s look at a summary of the facts. When gunpowder was effectively harnessed, it increased the range of attack of armies, which previously were limited by how far their strongest men could throw a spear or operate a bow. Catapults came into use only around two thousand years ago and they were large, bulky equipment that didn’t make for easy transport. Cannons and Rockets changed the game. They were compact and packed a punch. And any civilization that used them against one without, won.

Maximum Positive Impact: Probably the only positive measurable impact that they had was to speed up construction. And while that saved man-hours and increased productivity, it’s hard to judge how many people that affected.

Maximum Negative Impact: 10,000 - 100,000 people in a short time.
The bow and arrow could reach a range of up to 500 metres (Mongol Recurve bows). But what early guns couldn’t make up for in distance or sheer power, they covered for in compactness and ease of use. They came in a small package and were transported easily. Artillery and dynamite changed the landscape further, by nullifying the impenetrability of large fortifications. This would mark the first time when humans weren’t limited by large, physical structures blockading their way. They could eliminate now them with ease. With the advent of the industrial revolution came machine guns and rifles, and massacres became more common and could be inflicted by a small group of technologically advanced people on a larger population (read colonies.)

Nuclear Weapons

When the atomic bomb was born, humanity stepped into a new era. For the first time, we had in our hands a way to destroy all of humanity, and indeed, we still do. Previously, even if all the explosives in the world had been used in an instant, we’d be fine -- a little shook, but Earth would live on. But now, for the first time, we had enabled ourselves to wipe out humanity from the face of this planet. We live now in a state of unstable equilibrium, because no nation wants to be destroyed and so, holds back its nuclear weaponry, if not out of compassion, then out of fear.

Maximum Negative Impact - Hundreds of millions of people overnight, and more in the days that would follow.

Time Travel
The cutting edge of any field has always been facilitated by a super-power, be it a government, or a large corporation. And so, when time travel is made possible, it's reasonable to assume that the technology would be in the hands of a small group of powerful individuals. Maybe they could be responsible, and maybe they regulate its usage, but I doubt it. Here’s why.

Any modern technology is developed in an arms race. Take Artificial Intelligence for example. Governments and companies are racing each other in a bid to create the world’s first Artificial General Intelligence, but they’re not stopping themselves to try and evaluate the cost of their actions. Even a stark indicator such as the abuse of big-data social-media technology to influence the elections of the world’s most powerful country has barely left a dent or led to regulations to slow the growth of the industry. We don’t understand how the most basic of deep learning neural networks come to their conclusions and yet we forge ahead, determined to implement these systems in our physical world.

Humanity is like a kid in a candy shop. By the time the parent comes to find and reprimand the child, the kid has food poisoning. We have no control over ourselves, and we need to understand that. If time travel and the ability to travel into our pasts became a reality, it would only take one person to eliminate our world. We’ve all read enough science fiction to imagine how that would go.

I guess, when I think about it, my beef is not primarily with time travel. It’s with how irresponsible we’re being with advanced technology, in every area you can think of. How we don’t comprehend the power we have over the lives of countless others and yet, we wield it to our own, indiscriminate advantage. My disillusionment with corporations arises from their single-minded focus on money -- human cost be damned. Corporations are not evil, but they’re not good either. They’re just tools and entities that serve humanity. They're literally designed to create profit, and as long as humans control them, that would work. But now, they’ve taken on a life of their own. It’s as if their human leaders don’t matter, their employees don’t matter -- they’re all replaceable by metrics and cutting-edge algorithms.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we became the tools, and they our masters, and we never even noticed.