Time Travel

We have always talked about the need for time travel. We have seen it in movies and we have always heard about the fabric of space-time continuum getting damaged or even destroyed. Is this true or is it figment of imagination from Hollywood. What would be the benefits or repercussions of time travel?
People would say that if time travel was there then we could possibly stop World Wars, Apartheid, or even solve some personal mistakes or correct injustice. We could answer a lot of questions relating to archeology and remove the deciphering, learn the reason for the disappearance of dinosaurs, the reason for the extinction of species in various continents and probably even avoid them. These are the benefits.
But then what could be the repercussions. Would the world be what it is today? There is a saying in India, "whatever happens, happens for the good". Let us take World Wars for instance, it was definitely bad, but was that all that was to it? Did nothing good come out of the wars? Yes, there was, like advances in science and medicine, food processing technologies, communication technologies, travel technologies, spread of ethnic groups across the globe, providing the diversity, the advent of socialism in Europe. This is not taking away the great fall in humane values when thousands and thousands of people where killed. The WW II also gave numerous countries independence from the British Imperialism and provided an opportunity for these nations to find their identity.
Also let us say that we interfered with the lives of a certain individual who changed the world for good and then this individual changes his course and makes another change how would it affect the current state of world. Like if someone interfered with the work of Thomas Edisson and he decides to quit his experiment on electicity, would we have electricity or would someone else have discovered it? That is a chance which we can ill afford to take.
We are trying to converge the present and the past and then what would happen is anybody's guess.
All this while we have been talking about traveling back in time but what about travelling into the future. Is this feasible at all? This causes an assumption that we are reliving the same life as someone who already has and reliving the same mistakes as our minds are tuned to the fact that to travel to time in the future the time it must have already been in the past. Sounds confusing does it not. Or are we looking at extrapolation and then assuming the world to be in a certain state when we get there? But this is an assumption and so it may be or may not be.
Interesting topic. Think about it and comment your thoughts.