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• AKML & Symposium

  • Start
    3 Oct 2025
  • End
    5 Oct 2025
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  Register

  
  

  Registration is for 

  In-Person Attendance ONLY

  and will be open at a later date 

  
  

  All IGS Members in Good Standing Will Receive Instructions on How to Livestream the Event Online Prior to the AKML

  The 73rd Annual 

  Alfred Korzybski

  Memorial Lecture

  and the Symposium on

  Discourse,

  Dialogue,

  and Democracy

  October 3rd-5th, 2025

  for the Call for Papers Click Here

  Co-Sponsored by the

  New York Society for General Semantics

  the International Bateson Institute

  the Media Ecology Association

  the Tomkins Institute

  and the 404 Festival of Art and Technology

  featuring

  Tristan Harris

  speaking on

  The Narrow Path to a

  Humane AI Future
  

  Tristan Harris is Co-Founder of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to align technology with humanity’s best interests. He regularly briefs heads of state, technology CEOs, and US Congress members, in addition to mobilizing millions of people around the world through mainstream media. Tristan has explored the influences that hijack human attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs, from his childhood as a magician to his coursework in Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab to his leadership as a Design Ethicist at Google. Today, he studies how major technology platforms wield dangerous power over our ability to make sense of the world and leads the call for systemic change. In 2020, Tristan was featured in the two-time Emmy-winning Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma. The film unveiled how social media is dangerously reprogramming our brains and human civilization. It reached over 100 million people in 190 countries across 30 languages. His viral presentation, The AI Dilemma, with Aza Raskin, maps where we’re heading with AI and how we can respond. As a co-host of the top-rated technology podcast, Your Undivided Attention, he explores the drivers behind social media’s race for attention, its destabilization of society, and potential solutions. 
  

  The AKML evening will also feature a classical piano performance by Graziana Presicce.

  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).

  Show details
• Digital Tsunami Film Screening

  • When
    29 Oct 2025
  •  
    6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Location
    The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, New York, NY 10003

  Register

  Come Join Us In Person at the Players in NYC

  for a Special Screening of

  Digital Tsunami

  A Film by Fred Peabody

  The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director, producer, and other participants. The event is free to attend, with a cash bar available for attendees. Registration is required for entry.

  This screening is sponsored by the

  Institute of General Semantics

  and co-sponsored by the

  New York Society for General Semantics

  and

  Media Ecology Association

  

  We are engulfed in a digital tsunami—a toxic mix of artificial intelligence, state and corporate surveillance and social media addiction controlled by powerful algorithms. DIGITAL TSUNAMI shows how these are all part of a digital ecosystem that is changing us as humans—just as the prophetic media guru Marshall McLuhan predicted 60 years ago.

  
  

  “Director Fred Peabody (All Governments Lie, The Corporate Coup d’État) brings his signature journalistic rigour to timely examination of the ills of social media.… a chilling illustration of the pervasive nature that screens hold.”

  —Pat Mullen, POV magazine

  From the director, Fred Peabody: “After making ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE and THE CORPORATE COUP D’ÉTAT, I wanted my next film to be about the growing digital dystopia that is engulfing all of us. DIGITAL TSUNAMI is the film I came up with, and I believe it can make a difference. Like THE CORPORATE COUP D’ÉTAT and ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE, it documents injustice and societal harm being overlooked or underestimated because people are not seeing the big picture and historical context. It completes a trilogy of films bringing critical thought to crucial problems faced by society. Many of us are aware that if we don’t fix our planet’s natural, physical ecology, we’re doomed. Fewer people realize that if we don’t fix our planet’s 'media ecology' we may also be doomed. The good news is, we don’t have to be doomed. We can fix things. As I began researching this project, I was surprised to find that the famed 'media guru' Marshall McLuhan had warned of these problems back in the sixties, even though the press inaccurately portrayed him as a cheerleader for the electronic/digital revolution. If McLuhan were alive today, I think he’d say exactly what he said in 1966: 'The only alternative is to understand everything that’s going on, and then counter and neutralize it as much as possible, turn off as many buttons as you can, and frustrate them as much as you can...I don’t choose to just sit and let the juggernaut roll over me.'”

  Filmmaker Bios: 

  Fred Peabody produced, wrote, and directed the Emmy-nominated 2016 feature documentary ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE and the 2018 feature documentary THE CORPORATE COUP D’ÉTAT. The films premiered at TIFF and HOT DOCS respectively, and received high ratings on ARTE, ZDF, and STARZ. ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE won the Directors Guild (DGC) Allan King Award for Excellence in Documentary. Fred is an Emmy-winning journalist and filmmaker whose credits include 7 years as producer-director at ABC 20/20 (where he won an Emmy and received 4 Emmy nominations), and 7 years as producer-director on the CBC investigative series The Fifth Estate.

  Filmmaker, journalist, writer, Peter Raymont has produced and directed over 100 films and TV series during his 53-year career. His documentary feature, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire was honoured with the 2007 Emmy for Best Documentary and the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentaries at the Sundance Film Festival. Raymont’s films are often provocative investigations of “hidden worlds” in politics, the media, and big business. Guantanamo’s Child: Omar Khadr (2016) was nominated for an Emmy and received three Canadian Screen Awards. Raymont was an Executive Producer, along with Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer of Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band. He was the Executive Producer of, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On which won the 2023 International Emmy for Best Arts Documentary and Unloved: Huronia’s Forgotten Children, which premiered at 2022 Hot Docs International Film Festival. Plastic People is his most recent documentary feature, which had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Festival.

  Registration is free. All attendees must be registered in order to gain admittance to the club. This includes any guests you might want to bring with you.

  The program will take place in the Dining Hall on the 1st floor of the club. 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).

  Show details