Registration is for
In-Person Attendance ONLY
For Members of the
Institute of General Semantics
Registration
All IGS Members in Good Standing Will Receive Instructions on How to Livestream the Event Online Prior to the AKML
Full Schedule Added Below
The 74th Annual
Alfred Korzybski
Memorial Lecture
and the Symposium on
Language,
Listening,
Literacy,
and Algorithms
October 2nd-4th, 2026
Co-Sponsored by the
New York Society for General Semantics
the International Bateson Institute
the Media Ecology Association
and the Tomkins Institute
featuring
Ted Chiang
speaking on
"No Machine
Has Passed the
Turing Test"
It is now commonly asserted that the Turing Test is no longer a useful metric because current LLMs easily pass it. In this talk, Ted Chiang will offer a different interpretation of Turing's paper and what Turing actually meant by a thinking machine. Linguistic fluency of the type that Turing described is a very high bar, one so high that not only have we not achieved it, but we should arguably not even be aiming for it.
Ted Chiang is an American science fiction writer. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, six Locus awards, the PEN Malamud .JPG)
Award, and the Media Ecology Association's Mary Shelly Award. His novella “Story of Your Life” was the basis of the film Arrival (2016). His most recent short story collection, Exhalation (Knopf, 2019), was listed as one of the Top Ten Books of 2019 by The New York Times, and included in President Barack Obama’s 2019 reading list. In 2023, he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI.
The lecture, dinner, and symposium are being held at the historic Players Club in Gramercy Park, Manhattan.
Registration is free for IGS members and their guests, but all attendees must be registered in advance in order to gain admittance to the club. More information regarding the dinner and symposium schedule will be made available at a later date.
Please note that as an historic 19th century landmark, the site is not handicap accessible. Dress code is business casual and is strictly enforced, including no sneakers, shorts, ripped jeans, t-shirts).
Schedule:
Friday October 2nd
5:00 PM Check-In Opens
Wine and Cheese Reception
6:15 PM Musical Performance/Presentation
Introduction: Peggy Cassidy, Trustee, Institute of General Semantics and
President, New York Society for General Semantics
Piano Performance/Presentation: Rea Beaumont, University of Toronto
7:00 Dinner
8:00 Welcoming Remarks
Lance Strate, President, Institute of General Semantics
Presentation of the IGS Prizes and Awards
Eva Berger, Secretary, Institute of General Semantics
Jacqueline Rudig, Trustee, Institute of General Semantics
Introduction of the 74th Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Laura Trujillo Liñan, Trustee, Institute of General Semantics and
President, Asociación Mexicana de Semántica General
“No Machine Has Passed the Turing Test”
Ted Chiang
Saturday October 3rd
8:00-9:00 AM Check-In and Breakfast Reception
9:00-10:15 AM The Map is Not the Territory
Moderator: Nora Bateson, International Bateson Institute
“A Non-Aristotelian Hero: A General Semantics Reading of the Odyssey”
Martin H. Levinson, Institute of General Semantics
“Níl ach an Léirscáil an Choigríoch (The Map is Not the Territory): Media Representations of the Irish Language and the Lived Experience of Speakers”
Grace Foley, Trinity University
“General Semantics and YouTube: Rizzing the Reach”
Fred Cheyunski, Independent Scholar
“Cognizant Prompting: A General Semantics Approach to Artificial Intelligence”
Eva Berger, College of Management Academic Studies
10:30-12:00 Language in Thought and Action
Moderator: Susan Drucker, Hofstra University
“The Unspeakable Level”
Christopher Mayer, Institute of General Semantics
“The Art of Thinking: An Update on Condillac’s Work”
Robert T. Ackland, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Changing Times–Changing Meanings: Word Games in Conflict Media Discourse”
Yuliya Krylova-Grek, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
“The Role of Language in Promoting Global Citizenship Education”
Ricardo Meneses Calzada, Universidad Panamericana
“Midst”
Annelyse Gelman, University of Iowa
12-1:00 Lunch Break
1:00-2:15 Language Habits in Human Affairs
Moderator: Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan University
“A Language of Listening”
Mary P. Lahman, Manchester University
“Dialogue and the Necessity of Listening”
Joshua Clements, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
“Listening Differently to Communication Theory: Poetic Praxis”
Janie M. H. Fritz, Duquesne University
“For the Good of Plato”
Valerie V. Peterson, Grand Valley State University
2:30-3:45 The Art of Awareness
Moderator: Christopher Mayer, Institute of General Semantics
“Panels and Pointing in the Language and Literacy of (Un)Sequential Art”
Christina M. Knopf, SUNY Cortland
“What Are We Reading For?”
William Schear, University of Northern Colorado
“The End of First-Year Writing”
Geoffrey Bogan, University of Mississippi
“Playing with Perspective: Canadian Composer John Weinzweig and Performing Silence”
Rea Beaumont, University of Toronto
4:00-5:15 The Tyranny of Words
Moderator: Eva Berger, College of Management Academic Studies
“Two Dominant Trends in New Media: Decentralization and Asynchronization”
Corey Anton, Grand Valley State University
“Mapping the Attention Economy Landscape: Political Economy and a Crisis in Media Ecology”
Jermaine Charles, New York University
“Laws of Media, Media of Law: Reading Law in the Digital Age”
Aleksander Cywiński, University of Szczecin, Kinga Flaga-Gieruszyńska, University of Szczecin, Marcin Janowski, University of Szczecin, Aleksandra Klich, University of Szczecin, and Kalina Kukiełko, University of Szczecin
“The Collapse of Consciousness of Abstracting: Media Manipulation from Daguerre to AI”
Susan Drucker, Hofstra University
5:30-7:00 People in Quandaries
Moderator: Corey Anton, Grand Valley State University
“Algorhythms: Suffering, Rhythm, and Technological Life”
Tiffany Petricini, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
“Distinction without Difference: The Homogenizing Impact of ‘Nearest Neighbors’ Algorithms on Search and Society”
Ryan-Ashley Anderson, Independent Scholar
“From Cultural to Algorithmic Semiotypes: How AI Reconfigures Communicative Behavior”
Igor Korolyov, Taras Shevchenko National University, and Olena Marina, Munster Technological University
“Beyond Babel: Reclaiming Human Meaning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”
Laura Trujillo-Liñán, Universidad Panamericana
“Ecosystem Engineers: General Semantics Education and Algorithmic Rhetoric”
Ryan P. McCullough, West Liberty University
Sunday October 4th
8:00-9:00 AM Check-In and Breakfast Reception
9:00-10:15 Operational Philosophy
Moderator: Jacqueline Rudig, Institute of General Semantics
“The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Defining the Paradoxical Reality of AI
William Jefferson, Independent Scholar
“Modeling Language is Not Intelligence: AI, LLMs and World Models”
Michael Grabowski, Manhattan University
“AI, Art, the Artificial, and Artifice”
Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan University
“A Counter to the Grand Narrative of AI: Map, Mind and Power”
Sthitipragnya Dash, Independent Scholar
10:30-11:45 Steps to An Ecology of Mind
Moderator: Peggy Cassidy, Adelphi University
“Relationships and Maps”
Ana Sofía Durazo, Prepatoria Panamericana
“Among-ing”
Nora Bateson, International Bateson Institute
“Wonder”
Özüm Üçok-Sayrak, Duquesne University
“The Media Ecology of Stickball”
Robert Albrecht, New Jersey City University
12:00-1:15 Levels of Knowing and Existence
Moderator: Laura Trujillo Liñan, Universidad Panamericana
“A New Language of History for Meeting Humanity’s Greatest Challenges”
Jesse Lydia Henshaw, Independent Scholar
“Language, Listening, Literacy and Algorithms: A Hermeneutic-Personalist Approach to Human Understanding in the Digital Age”
Elsa G. Sánchez Huerta Villalba, Universidad Panamericana
“The Manhattan-Toronto Dream Project: Re-Formulating the Alexandrian Archive”
Mark Goldhagen, Independent Scholar
“Financial Rhetoric’s Construction of Totality and Exclusion of the Other: Digital Assets, Gamification and Prediction Markets”
Elisha Sidhu, Duquesne University
1:30-3:00 Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk
Mary P. Lahman, Manchester University
“The Room Where It (Didn't) Happen: Spatial Intelligence for Higher Education”
Tiffany Petty Gilliam, Duquesne University
“Real New York Women, Real Impact on Language, Listening, Learning, and Literacy in Early Childhood: Ms. Rachel and Bari Koral as AI Antidotes, Yet Aided by Algorithms”
Donna Flayhan, Independent Scholar
“The Map is Not New York: Film, Television, and the Construction of an Imagined City”
Gohar Aznauryan, Institute of General Semantics
“Riffing on Ryun and Keino”
Tim Lyons, Independent Scholar
“From Aristotle to AI: Media, Cybernetics, and Evolving Information Environments”
Lance Strate, Fordham University