WHAT IF?(The Talk of the Town)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 15-NOV-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

For the past several years, Robert Max Jackson, a professor of sociology at N.Y.U., has taught a freshman honors seminar called "What If? The Art and Science of Imagining a Society That Never Was," in which he poses a series of outlandish questions--what if we could live for hundreds of years? what if a device were invented that would tell you conclusively when someone was lying?--and assigns the science-fiction novels of Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. LeGuin. Jackson, who describes himself as "well left of liberal," likes science fiction because it represents "an effort by someone to alter the rules of life and the...

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