![]() | Since 1952, the Institute of General Semantics has sponsored the annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture (AKML), a presentation given by a distinguished individual on a topic of interest to the field of general semantics. |
In 1952, two years after founder Alfred Korzbyski’s sudden death, Institute of General Semantics Director M. Kendig initiated an annual program to remember Korzybski and celebrate the continuation of his goals for human development and progress.
This program became known as the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture Series, or “AKML.” Kendig viewed this series as a means not only to remember Korzybski, but also to celebrate the contributions of those whose work is scientifically oriented and promotes what Korzybski termed “time-binding,” the unique human ability to build on the achievements of others through the use of symbols and languages.
An impressive lineup of speakers has added significant prestige to the AKML, which over the years has featured prominent authors, scientists, psychologists, educators, and individuals from varied backgrounds.
A few of the more recognizable names include Abraham Maslow, Buckminster Fuller, Albert Ellis, Steve Allen, Leonard Shlain, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Lou Marinoff, Ellen Langer, J. Allan Hobson, Robert Carneiro, James Van Allen, Karl H. Pribram, Deborah Tannen, Sherry Turkle, and others.
A complete list of past speakers, along with transcripts of their presentations and audio and video recordings (where available), is below. The listed affiliations for each speaker were current on the date of the lecture and may have since changed.
Robertson Professor of Media Studies and the director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, Cultural historian, media scholar, and lecturer
Lecture Title: “Making Meaning through Facebook: A Semantic and Visual-Culture Tour through Social Media”
Author and professor of communication studies at Grand Valley State University
Lecture Title: “Lessons Learned from Lee Thayer”
John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School, First woman national president of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008)
Lecture Title: “Hate Speech, Counterspeech …”
Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies at Fordham University
Lecture Title: “Amazing Ourselves to Death: Contemplating the Technological Tempest of Our Times”
Introduction & Presentation Videos:
Professor of Media Ecology, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, at New York University
Lecture Title: “Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk: Politics in America 2017”
Psychiatrist and writer
Author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Author of The Internet Is Not the Answer
Lecture Title: “The Internet Is Not the Answer”
Author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist: Hermann Göring, Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, and a Fatal Meeting of Minds at the End of WWII Lecture Title: “The General-Semantics Psychiatrist and the Nazi”
Professor of biological anthropology at University of California, Berkeley
Author of Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter
Science advocate, humanitarian, and screenwriter
- Author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America
Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University.
Author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships, including You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (New York Times Best Seller)
President of the Institute for Intercultural Studies.
Author of eleven books including Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition; With A Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson; and most recently, Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery
Teacher and documentarian
Author of Screenagers, host of Frontline’s The Persuaders
Read the Lecture | Listen to the Lecture (Intro by Lance Strate) | Listen to the Lecture (Alternate Version)
Chairman of Laparoscopic Surgery at the California Pacific Medical Center
Author of The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, Art & Physics, and Sex, Time & Power
Director, Media Education Lab, Temple University, Founder of the Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA)
Author of Reading the Media
Read the Lecture | Listen to the Lecture
Curator, Anthropology Division, American Museum of Natural History
Author of Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology and The Muse of History and the Science of Culture
Motivational speaker and nightclub hypnotist, Student of Dr. Irving J. Lee, Long-time supporter of general semantics
Editor of Logic and General Semantics and author of Words, Meanings and People
Read the Lecture | Listen to the Lecture
Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center
Author of The Dreaming Brain, Sleep, Dreaming as Delirium, and, with Jonathan A. Leonard, Out of its Mind: Psychiatry in Crisis: a Call for Reform
Chair of Philosophy, City College of New York, Founding President of the American Philosophical Practitioners AssociationAuthor of Plato, Not Prozac!
Author of A General-Semantics Glossary
Director Emeritus, Institute of General Semantics
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
Author of Mindfulness and The Power of Mindful Learning
Educator and author of Horace’s Hope, Horace’s School, and Horace’s Compromise
Author of The Illuminatus Trilogy and Prometheus Rising
Professor of Human Development, University of Chicago
Author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention
Former Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
Son of Dr. Wendell Johnson, the author of the popular general semantics text People in Quandaries
Professor Emeritus and Director of the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing
Known for his contributions to machine intelligence, particularly through “Fuzzy Logic”
Professor of English and Director of the English Graduate Program at Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey
Author and “doublespeak” authority
Author, entertainer, songwriter
Creator of NBC’s Tonight Show
President and Founder, Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, now the Albert Ellis Institute
Author of numerous books on personal adjustment
Founder, Director Emeritus and Senior Scholar, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
Educator and author
Authority on interpersonal communication
Psychologist
Research Fellow, Russell Sage Foundation
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique, Sonoma State University, California
Louis E. Kirstein Professor Emeritus of Human Relations and former Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Harvard University
Neurologist, Neurosurgeon, author
Professor of Neuroscience, Stanford University
Emeritus Professor of English, Columbia University
Robert R. Blake
President , Scientific Methods, Inc. Now Grid International, Inc.
Jane Srygley Mouton
Vice President, Scientific Methods, Inc. Now Grid International, Inc.
Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and Semiotics, Indiana University
Photographer, painter, and author
Author and lecturer
Formerly Director of Publications, Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation
Author of Communications: The Transfer of Meaning
Emeritus Professor of Speech Communication, University of Denver
Author and Editor of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Magazine
Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology, Drew University
Director, Department of Psychiatry, Roosevelt Hospital, New York
Kenneth G. Johnson
Professor of Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Neil Postman
Professor of Media Ecology, New York University
Author of numerous books on media and culture
“General Semantics: Whence 1920…Where 1973…Whither”
Panel with:
J. Samuel Bois
Viewpoints Institute, Los Angeles. Author of The Art of Awareness
Elton S. Carter
Dean for Graduate Studies, University of Nebraska
Walter Probert
Professor of Law, University of Florida, Gainesville
Extraordinary Fellow, Cambridge University
Internationally-known writer, scholar, literary critic and analyst of culture
Professor of Physics and Natural Philosophy, Yale University
Associate Director for Research, Oceanic Institute, Waimanalo, Hawaii
Pioneering scientist-philosopher, lecturer, and author of The Next Development of Man, The Unconscious Before Freud, and The Unitary Principle in Physics and Biology
Professor of Political Studies and Geography, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario
President of the Canadian Association for American Studies
Author of Science and Human Values and The Identity of Man
Physicist
Director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Professor of Linguistics and English, Chairman, Department of Anthropology and Linguistics, State University of New York at Buffalo
Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, New York School of Psychiatry
Chief of Research of the Health Services of the Armies of France
Director of Physio-Biological Research and Physician-in-Chief of the National Navy
American Public Health Associations’ Albert Lasker Award, 1957
Professor of Chemistry, Yale University
Author of The Sciences and the Arts: A New Alliance
Professor of Psychology, University of Texas
Author of The Managerial Grid and co-founder of Managerial Grid Theory
Research Laboratory of Electronics, M.I.T.
Author of Finality and Form
“Extending the Parabola”
Symposium with:
Charles M. Pomerat
Professor of Cytology and Director of the Tissue Culture Laboratory, University of Texas, Galveston
William J. Fry
Research Professor of Physics and Director of Biophysical Research Laboratory, University of Illinois
James A. Van Allen
Professor and Head, Department of Physics, State University of Iowa
Professor of Surgery, College of Medicine, State University of Iowa
Chairman of Division of Neurosurgery, University of Iowa Hospitals
Author of “Preface to the 4th edition of Science and Sanity“
Professor of Psychology, Brandeis
Author of Motivation and Personality
Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University
Author of Mirror for Man and What is Science?
Distinguished engineer, mathematician, inventor, designer, mechanic, writer and philosopher
Author of Nine Chains to the Moon and Dymaxion Air-Ocean World Map
Professor of Philosophy and Law, Yale University
Author of The Meeting of East and West and The Logic of the Sciences and Humanities
Professor of Human Relations, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration
Author of Management and Morale
William Vogt
Author of Road to Survival
National Director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America
M. F. Ashley Montagu
Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers University
Author of On Being Human and Statement on Race
The Institute has sponsored summer seminar-workshops for over 50 years that focus on teaching theory and practical applications of general semantics.
The goal of these programs is to apply general semantics to help you restructure your view of yourself and the world to create more satisfying personal and professional relationships. Attendees can participate in lectures, small group discussions, exercises, demonstrations, sensing practices, and social events to experience the rewards of “living through” general semantics.
These materials come from the June 2006 Seminar-Workshop participant notebook. They include an abundance of lessons and instruction for teaching and learning general semantics.
The following video clips (.wmv) come from past seminar-workshop presentations.
The following videos and supplementary material provide insight into what past summer seminar-workshops hosted by the Institute of General Semantics were like for the participants.
Over 16 days in mid-August, 1961, the Institute of General Semantics hosted its first-ever West Coast Summer Seminar-Workshop.
Held at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the 1961 seminar-workshop had 58 enrollees — the most ever to that date — and was regarded then as “probably the most productive seminar-workshop in the Institute’s history.”
M. Kendig, Charlotte Schuchardt Read, O. R. Bontrager, Russell Meyers, Catherine Minteer, Edward L. Gates, Nathaniel Hollister, Elwood Murray, Michael Walsh, and Kenneth Johnson staffed the seminar-workshop in various capacities. J. Talbot Winchell, in whose name is one of the distinctive awards offered by the Institute of General Semantics, was in attendance. Former host of The Tonight Show, Steve Allen, was among the registrants.
Click here to purchase the General Semantics Bulletin Nos. 28 & 29 from the IGS Store.
Participant Karl Hinkle kept a “movie record” of the seminar-workshop.
Captured in the footage are teachers and participants in lectures, downtime during the intense seminar-workshop, awareness training led by Charlotte Schuchardt Read, and a glimpse at the participant photo shoot.
This silent film lasts nearly 22 minutes before it starts to loop briefly at the end.
The photo below depicts those in attendance at the 1961 Summer Seminar-Workshop. Click the photo to enlarge it.
The Institute of General Semantics 1961 Summer Seminar-Workshop at the University of California at Santa Barbara
First Row
KARL HINKLE, Lockheed Missles & Space Co., Sunnyvale, Cal. GENEVIEVE OSLUND, Probation Officer, Los Angeles County. GEORGE STANLEY, El Camlno College, Cal. GENE ELBINGER, Senior Probation Officer, Los Angeles County. E. F. MCDANIEL, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Ret.), Oakland, Cal. JAMES VAUGRAN, University of Pittsburgh, Pa. TALBOT WINCHELL, South Pasadena, Cal. JAMES NEWMAN, (Pres.) Advsnced Seminars, Los Angeles. GEORGE COOK, Saskatchewan Teachers College, Saskatoon, Canada. LILLY MILIGAN, Grtffith Co., Los Angeles. NORMAN HARRINGTON, San Quentin Prison, Cal. PAUL COOPER, Central Management Services, Los Angeles.
Second Row
GRANT ANGELL, Audio-Dynamics Corp., Portland, Oregon. ANN MARTINOVICH, John Muir School, San Francisco. EVAN AIKEN, Bendix Corp., North Hollywood. EDEN RYL, Communication and Sales Consultant, Hollywood. MARTHA YORKSTON, Everett Junior College, Washington. JOAN THROOP, Poughkeepsie, New York. MONTGOMERY THROOP, IBM Laboratory, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. JAMES MOFFETT, Philips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire. FRED BISSELL, MD, Aurora, Ohio. ROLLY HILLIARD, Psychtatric Social Worker, Los Angeles. ETHEL LONGSTREET, Viewpoints Inc., Beverly Hills, Cal.
Third Row
BLANCHE SANDERS, Santa Cruz, Cal. ROBERT HASLER, Stockbroker, Palm Beach, Florida. JUDITH HARRINGTON, (student) Radcliffe College, Mass. [Staff: EDWARD L. GATES, Institute of General Semantics. NATHANIEL HOLLISTER, MD, Dayton, Ohio. CHARLOTTE SCHUCHARDT READ, New York. O. R. BONTRAGER, PhD, California (Pa.) State College (1962-Arizona State University). M. KENDIG, Institute of Gereral Semantics. RUSSELL MEYERS, MD, FACS, State University of Iowa. KENNETH JOHNSON, PhD, University of Wisconsin.] JOYCE COOTZ (graduate student) San Diego state College. MEYER BRAUDE (Colonel, USA), Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. MARY MORAIN, San Francisco. HELEN RINGROSE, County Welfare Dept., Riverside, Cal. CLINTON HEATH (USN, Ret.), Westinghouse Electric Corp., Sunnyvale, Cal. JUNE HEATH, Palo Alto, Cal.
Fourth Row
BURYL PAYNE, Boeing Airplane Co., Seattle, Wash. CHARLES TAYLOR, PhD, Fresno State College, Cal. JOSEPH STEWART, Salida, Colorado. ROBERT BUCKLEY, Paisley School, Oregon. KENNETH HOOVER, PhD, Arizona State University. MARY MORRIS, Arizona State University, THOMAS WEISS, PhD, Arizona State University. MARC HOWENSTEIN (student) University of California, Santa Barbara. EUGENE PECKHAM, Western Executive Training Services, Burlingame, Cal. HOWARD CAMPBELL, EdD, Fresno State College, Cal. JOAN SCHOETTLER, Lincoln Jr. High School, Santa Monica, Cal. IONE HARRINGTON, San Francisco. KENNETH MANSUY, Picatinny Arsenal, Dover, New Jersey.
Fifth Row
GLORIA SMITH, Bay Area Air Pollution Control, San Francisco. MARCO JOHNSON, Boeing Airplane Co., Seatlle, Wash. BOB WANDERER, freelance writer, San Francisco. ORVIL WALKER, Lockheed Aircraft Corp., Sunnyvale, Cal. CHARLES BARTL, PhD, Portland State College, Oregon. WEBSTER AUGUSTINE, Boeing Airplane Co., Seattle, Wash. ROGER ESHLEMAN, Shimer College, Mount Carroll, lllinois. BETTY HOLLINGSWORTH, law office, San Francisco.
Not In Picture
Registrants: STEVE ALLEN, Encino, Cal. JOHN HOTCHKISS, MD, Kaiser Hospital, San Francisco. J. GORDON ROBERTS, (Pres.) Roberts Dairy Co., Omaha, Nebraska. MICHAEL TURETSKY, Los Angeles.
Visiting Lecturers: CATHERINE MINTEER, Santa Monica, Cal. ELWOOD MURRAY, PhD, University of Denver. MICHAEL WALSH, SeD, Beverly Hills, Cal.
A year after the 1961 Summer Seminar-Workshop, participants Robert Wanderer and Ethel Longstreet recounted their experiences.
Click here to read their reports from the General Semantics Bulletin Nos. 28 & 29 (1961-1962).
The following film was made during the 1948 Summer Seminar-Workshop. It features the founder of the Institute of General Semantics, Alfred Korzybksi.
Summer 1948 Seminar-Workshop Film (featuring Allfred KorzybskI) (1948)
The following recap was drawn from video recorded at the 1992 Summer Seminar at Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI.
Below is a selection of past conferences and symposia sponsored or co-sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics, along with roundups that include photos, video, papers, publicity, and more.
Event Roundup
Presented at the Players Club in New York City from October 1-3, 2021, attendees listened to over 25 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled Science, Sanity, and the Semantic Environment.
Videos
Event Roundup
Presented virtually over Zoom from October 9-11, 2020, attendees listened to nearly 30 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled The Semantic Environment in a Time of Uncertainty.
Videos
2019 - The Tyranny of Words
- Featuring the 67th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture by Nadine Strossen
- October 11-13, 2019
- Princeton Club, New York, NY
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 11-13, 2019, attendees listened to more than 25 presenters at the general semantics The Tyranny of Words symposium.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 26-28, 2018, attendees listened to more than 25 presenters at the general semantics Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk symposium.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 27-29, 2017, attendees listened to more than 25 presenters at the general semantics Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk symposium.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 21-23, 2016, attendees listened to more than 30 presenters at the general semantics Language in Thought and Action symposium.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 2-4, 2015, attendees listened to over 20 presenters at the general semantics Language and “Reality” symposium.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 24-26, 2014, attendees listened to over 25 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled Making Sense through Time-Binding.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 25-27, 2013, attendees listened to over 25 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled Language and Symbol Use in the Twenty-First Century.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 26-28, 2012, attendees listened to over 20 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled Language and Symbol Use in Politics and Other Arenas.
Videos
Event Roundup
At the Princeton Club in New York City from October 28-30, 2011, attendees listened to over 20 presenters at the general semantics symposium titled Communication in the 21st Century.
Videos
October 10 - Photography by Michael DamesPhotographer Michael Dames shot the presentations delivered during the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture. | October 29 - 31 - Photography by Mariusz HanFordham University student Mariusz Han, SJ, photographed many presenters at the symposium. |
Event Roundup
At Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus from September 11-13, 2009, a large number of attendees listened to over 70 presenters at the international general semantics conference titled Across the Generations: Legacies of Hope and Meaning.
Photo Galleries
Three photographers covered the weekend’s events.
September 11 - Janet Faller SassiPhotographer Janet Faller Sassi captured images from the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture | September 11 - 13 - Mariusz HanFordham University student Mariusz Han, SJ, photographed many presenters at the conference. |
Robert Barry Francos
Photographer Robert Barry Francos also documented the conference with photos. He has created three galleries of photos from the conference.
Event Roundup
On November 14, 2008, the Institute of General Semantics hosted the 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture at the Princeton Club in New York City. Douglas Rushkoff delivered the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, titled “Playing the Future: Towards a Creative Society.”
On November 15-16, 2008, IGS followed with a two-day symposium at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus titled Creating the Future: Conscious Time-Binding for a Better Tomorrow.
The Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Douglas Rushkoff, teacher and documentarian, author of Screenagers, and host of Frontline’s The Persuaders, presented the 56th Alfred Koryzbksi Memorial Lecture to a large, attentive crowd at the Princeton Club in New York City. His lecture, titled “Playing the Future: Towards a Creative Society,” is below.
New York Press Article
Brian Heater wrote an account the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture that ran in the New York Press on November 18th, 2008. It is now offline, but the text is preserved below.
Generational Semantics: Writer Douglas Rushkoff at the Institute of General Semantics Dinner
by Brian Heater
The writer and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff would, of course, have been remiss had he not addressed the polarized nature of his audience right off the bat. The front half of the room was monopolized by circular tables covered in white tablecloths, surrounded be gray-haired diners who had arrived at the Princeton Club at 6 p.m. to participate in the $90-a-plate meal. They made up a large portion of The New York Society for General Semantics, a 62-year-old offshoot of the Institute of General Semantics, which boasts the hopeful mission statement of, “improv[ing] one’s ability to evaluate the world and one’s place in it.”
The list of previous speakers at the event included such diverse luminaries as Buckminster Fuller, Steve Allen, Robert Anton Wilson—a list on which, the club’s acting president noted thoughtfully, Rushkoff’s name surely didn’t seem out of place.
Toward the back of the room were rows of chairs set up for the 8 o’clockers, those who poured into the room two hours later, forgoing that $90 meal, eager to watch the Ecstasy Club author in action. A motley assortment that were at least half the median age as those seated up in front.
“This is a really interesting mix,” Rushkoff smiled, at the top of his speech. “The half over here came because you’re members of the Institute of General Semantics and pay dues and get newsletters, and the other half of these people probably got a Facebook message…There’s two very different paths. Of course they wouldn’t have been able to come, were it not for the generosity of the [front] group. You guys, by paying your dues, made this possible. Instead of seeing your contribution as the privilege to get this thing, you decided that your contribution was about the privilege to share this thing.”
It was a perfect entry point into a talk that would have no doubt immediately been written off as socialist rhetoric by “Joe the Plumber” and his ilk. Over the next two hours, Rushkoff traced the present-day economic collapse all the way back to the Renaissance and the birth of the self, largely succeeding in bringing the room’s binary attendance together, save for the occasionally alienating video game metaphor—which, while effective in illustrating his points using references to programming language and mods, was no doubt a touch baffling to those finishing up their meals, scratching heads at references to virtual worlds. Still, in all it was a rather compelling talk by one of our most prominent counter-cultural media theorists, particularly when he referred to president-elect Obama (of whom Rushkoff admitted he was certainly a fan) as, “playing president.” Whether or not you agreed with such sentiments, there was likely nary a person in the room not drawn in by Rushkoff’s assertions.
Blog Posts
Lance Strate
IGS Executive Director Lance Strate wrote two entries in his blog titled Blog Time Passing about the weekend. The first was his personal account of the weekend, and the second was a corrigenda from the AKML.
Read Lance Strate’s first blog post about the weekend Read Lance Strate’s second blog post about the weekendRobert Barry Francos
Not only did Robert Barry Francos photograph the weekend’s events, but he also provided a personal account of the weekend in his blog titled FFanzeen: Rock ‘n’ Roll With Integrity.
Read Robert Barry Francos’s account of the weekendMore photos by Robert Barry Francos are above in the Photo Gallery section.
Video
In the following video, Martin H. Levinson presents Allen Flagg the 2008 J. Talbot Winchell Award.
Photo GalleryNovember 14 - 16Special thanks to Robert Barry Francos for photographing the weekend’s events. |
Event Roundup
The Institute of General Semantics was one of five sponsoring organizations for the 55th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and All-Day Symposium held on October 26-27, 2007, at the Princeton Club and Fordham University respectively. The Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture featured Dr. Leonard Shlain, M.D. whose lecture was titled “Right Brain/Left Brain: Hemispheric Lateralization and its Effects on Religion, Culture, Gender and History.” Shlain is the author of three best-selling books and a professor of laparoscopic brain surgery in California.
The symposium, titled “Mind and Consciousness: Understanding/Reconciling/Integrating Symbol Systems and Nervous Systems,” featured twelve speakers whose topics ranged from “Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living” to “Right Brain, Left Brain and How They Affect our Food Choices” to “Understanding the Decalogue through General Semantics and Media Ecology.” Before the sessions began, New York Society for General Semantics Vice President Martin H. Levinson was presented with the Media Ecology Association’s Suzanne K. Langer Award for his book Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times.
The room where the symposium was held was filled to capacity. Attendees at the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and the symposium were in general agreement that both these events were highly worthwhile learning experiences.
Photo GallerySpecial thanks to Katherine Liepe-Levinson for photographing the event and editing the images. October 27 |
Event Roundup
From October 27-28, 2006, the Institute of General Semantics sponsored the Making Sense Conference at the Arlington Hilton Hotel in Arlington, Texas. Renee Hobbs delivered the 55th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture titled “Literacy in the 21st Century,” the culmination of a weekend of over 20 presentations from national and international presenters.
Preceding the conference from October 24-26, the Institute of General Semantics hosted a special Pre-Conference Workshop on “Making Sense,” which offered participants a unique opportunity to review some of the basic principles of general semantics, then apply those principles toward major issues of the day. The Pre-Conference Workshop was held at Read House, the headquarters for the Institute of General Semantics in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
On the evening of October 28, 2006, Renee Hobbs, Director of the Media Education Lab at Temple University, Founder of the Alliance for a Media Liberate America (AMLA), and author of Reading the Media, presented the 54th Alfred Koryzbksi Memorial Lecture to a large crowd as the apex of the Making Sense Conference at the Arlington Hilton Hotel in Arlington, Texas. Her lecture, titled “Literacy in the 21st Century,” is below.
Videos
Photo Gallery |
The following papers and presentations are pre-publication drafts from the Making Sense Conference. A number of the items below were later edited and published in the General Semantics Bulletin, No. 73 (2006).
Download GSB 73 from the IGS Store
- Featuring the 53rd Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture by Robert L. Carneiro
- April 22-23, 2005
- American Museum of Natural History, Linder Theater, New York, NY
Videos
Event Roundup
From October 31 to November 2, 2003, the Institute of General Semantics sponsored the Twelfth International Conference on General Semantics in Las Vegas, Nevada. Titled Confronting the Challenges of Conflicting World Views, the conference was co-sponsored by the International Society for General Semantics and the New York Society for General Semantics. It featured the 52nd Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, delivered by Sanford I. Berman.
The Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Sanford I. Berman, motivational speaker, nightclub hypnotist, editor of Logic and General Semantics and author of Words, Meanings and People, delivered the 52nd Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture titled “On the Teaching of General Semantics.”
Papers & Presentations
The following papers were accepted and their authors were invited to present them at the conference.
Prior Conferences & Symposia
The Institute of General Semantics has sponsored congresses and conferences dating back to 1935.