Overview
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 roundup of the event includes publicity from the event and personal accounts, plus photographs and video taken during the weekend.
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.
- Read the Lecture
- Listen to the Lecture:
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- Alternate Version:
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Video
Photo Gallery
Special thanks to Robert Barry Francos for photographing the weekend’s events.
November 14
November 15
November 16
Publicity
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.
Original Source: http://www.nypress.com/blogx/display_blog.cfm?bid=28618189
Accounts in Blogs
Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Rushkoff explains in a blog post on the website for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies that being the 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecturer was ”the biggest honor [he's] had as a public speaker.” Comments follow the blog post.
Click here to read Douglas Rushkoff’s account of being the 56th Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecturer.
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.
Click here to read Lance Strate’s first blog post about the weekend.
Click here to read Lance Strate’s second blog post about the weekend.
Robert 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.
Click here to read Robert Barry Francos’s account of the weekend.
Click here to view selected photos and a short account of the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture.
More photos by Robert Barry Francos are above in the Photo Gallery section.