New Languages, New Relations, New Realities

So, I've been working very hard on this event coming up at the end of the month.  Here's the schedule, I hope you can make it!

For Registration Information, go to http://www.generalsemantics.org/index.php/component/content/article/285-akml-58.html

And if you want to go to the AKML Dinner, better register now, we'll have to close it off next week!

Anyway, this is going to be very cool, fun, illuminating, and inspiring.  I hope to see you there!

New Languages, New Relations, New Realities Symposium

Sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics

Co-Sponsored by the

Media Ecology Association

New York Society for General Semantics

Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences

and

Fordham University

October 29-31, 2010

Fordham University

Lincoln Center Campus

McNally Auditorium

Law School Building

140 W. 62nd Street, Between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues

New York, New York

Friday  October 29

8:30-9:00 AM                          Registration Opens & Breakfast

9:00 AM-12:00 Noon              Evolving Languages

Moderators:              Eva Berger, College of Management, Tel Aviv

                        Jacqueline Rudig, Institute of General Semantics

9:00-9:30 AM                        "Korzybski's Apple and the World of Null-A:  Reflections on Teaching General Semantics Through the Lens of Science Fiction"

            Edward Tywoniak, St. Mary's College

9:30-10:00 AM            "Fantastic Language/Political Reporting:  The Science Fiction   Illocutionary Force Is With Us"

Marleen Barr, City University of New York

10:00-10:30 AM            "'Pernicious Stuff':  19^th Century Media, the Children Who Loved Them, and the Adults Who Worried About Them"

Margaret Cassidy, Adelphi University

10:30-11:00 AM             "What Do We Talk About When We Talk About 'Transparency'? Notes on the Origins of the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Impact Statements"

Michael Schudson, Columbia University

11:00-11:30 AM            "The Renaissance of Literacy in Texting and Tweeting"

Paul Levinson, Fordham University

11:30-12:00  AM            "If Not A, Then E"

Lance Strate, Fordham University/Institute of General Semantics

12:00-1:30 PM                         Lunch Break

1:30-4:30                                    Evolving Relations and Realities

Moderators:               Janet Sternberg, Fordham University

                        Lance Strate, Fordham University

1:30-2:30 PM                        "Connected:  A Declaration of Interdependence" (Rough Cut Screening and Discussion)

Tiffany Shlain, The Moxie Institute

2:30-3:30 PM                        "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age"

Douglas Rushkoff, Independent Scholar

3:30-4:30 PM                        "An Ecology of Mind" (Preview Screening and Discussion)

Nora Bateson, Independent Filmmaker

5:30-7:30 PM                                    Dinner Break

AKML Dinner (reservations required)

In the Lowenstein Hall Atrium

on the Plaza Level, off the cafeteria

113 W. 60th Street, Corner of Columbus Avenue

7:30-9:30 PM                                    The 58th Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture

Introductory Remarks

                                                Lance Strate, Executive Director, Institute of General Semantics

                                                Martin Levinson, President, Institute of General Semantics

                                                Allen Flagg, President, New York Society for General Semantics

Jacqueline Rudig, Vice-President, Institute of General Semantics

"Language and New Media:  How Texting, Tweeting, E-mail and Facebook Are Transforming Relationships

                                                Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University

                                   

Saturday October 30

Registration Opens & Breakfast 8:30-9:00 AM

9:00 AM-1:00 PM                        People in Quandaries

Moderators:            Jacqueline Rudig, Institute of General Semantics

                        Susan Jasko, California University of Pennsylvania

9:00-10:00 AM              "Uncommon Sense"

Bob Eddy, Institute of General Semantics

10:00-11:00 AM            "Was It Something I Said? General Semantics and the Unacceptable Remark"

Nicholas Johnson, University of Iowa

11:00-12:00 AM              "The Place of the Other"

Gary Gumpert and Susan Drucker, Urban Communication Foundation

12:00-1:00 PM              "How Just is Our System of Justice: Some Challenges and Insights into American Law and Lawyering"

Frank Scardilli, United States Court of Appeals

2:30-4:30 PM                                    Language in Thought and Action

Moderators:             Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College

                        Edward Tywoniak, St. Mary's College

                                    "Twitter and the New Publicity"

Joseph Faina, University of Texas, Austin

                                    "Does Social Media Help Political Communicators Engage with Young Citizens? An Analysis of How Political Communicators are Using Emergent Communication Technology in their Relationships with Young Citizens"

Kristin N. English, University of Georgia

                                    "Make Mine Medium:  FaceBook as a Medium for Mentoring"

Susan Jasko, California University of Pennsylvania

                                    " New Languages:  Newbie Steps to Fluency in Media Ecology"

Karen Lollar, Metropolitan State College of Denver

                                    "A Non-Aristotelian Re-orientation"

C. A. Hilgartner, Hilgartner & Associates

                                    "Extensional Orientation: The Alpha and Omega of Sane Communication"

Richard Fiordo, University of North Dakota

5:00-7:30 PM                        Philosophy in a New Key

Moderators:              Bill Petakanas, Western Connecticut State University

5:00-6:00 PM                        "'Sell T-Shirts, Not Songs':  The Future of Music in the World of New Media

David Rothenberg, New Jersey Institute of Technology

6:00-7:00 PM                        "Creating a General Semantics Self"

Milton Dawes, Institute of General Semantics

7:00 PM                        General Semantics Jam Session

Sunday October 31

Registration Opens & Breakfast 8:30-9:00 AM

9:00 AM-1:00 PM                        The Tyranny of Words

Moderators:  Richard Fiordo, University of North Dakota

                        Ben Hauck, Institute of General Semantics

9:00-10:00 AM              "Topics in Teaching General Semantics:  A. Why They’ve Never Heard of General Semantics. B. About Metaphor"

Bill Petkanas, Western Connecticut State University

10:00-11:00 AM             "Media vs. Communication: Narrative Medicine in Pediatrics"

Eva Berger, College of Management, Tel Aviv

11:00-12:00 AM             "From Subject to Function:  McLuhan’s Semantic for the Digital Age"

Elena Lamberti, Università Degli Studi Di Bologna

12:00-1:00 PM            New Languages, Relations and Realities:  A Writers' Roundtable

  Moderator:     Meir Ribalow, New River Dramatists

  Participants:   Michelle Anderson

  Leslie Carroll

  Sol Stein

  Chuck Wachtel

2:30-3:45 PM                                    Language, Thought, and Reality

Moderator:  Ben Hauck, Institute of General Semantics

                                    "The Knowledge Most Worth Knowing"

Hillel A. Schiller, Institute of General Semantics

                                                " Nietzsche and Korzybski:  Comparative Reviews 

on Philosophical and Linguistic Issues"

Zhenbin Sun, Fairleigh Dickinson Univeristy

                                    "Language Power: Korzybski's Model of Interdisciplinary Scholarship"

Blake Seidenshaw, Columbia University

                                    "The Observing Self:  How Immersion In Our (Over)mediated Culture Leads To Increased Self-Awareness"

David Zweig, Independent Scholar

4:00-5:15 PM                                    Science and Sanity

Moderator:  Lance Strate, Fordham University

                                    "Getting Schooled: The Sports Blog as Classroom using the Basketball Blog Knickerblogger.Net as a Case Study"

Anastacia Kurylo, Marymount Manhattan College and Michael Kurylo, Knickerblogger.Net

                                    "Fascism as a Semantic Void into the Metanarrative of Rational Modernity"

Alessandro Saluppo, Fordham University

                                    "The Quaker Tradition:  Meaning in Silence"

                                                Michael Plugh, Temple University

                                    “Are We Externalizing Ourselves Out of Existence?: A Speculation On The Future of Humankind”

Eugene Marlow, Baruch College

Social Media Goes to the Movies

I haven't had the chance to see the Facebook movie just yet, have you?  I know I should, and I'll get to it eventually, but in the meantime, I just had to share this YouTube parody video that a friend on MySpace brought to my attention:

A Twitter movie, why not?  Here's what it says over on the YouTube page, courtesy of indymogul:

If Hollywood can make an overly dramatic film about the early years of Facebook, why can't we make an overly dramatic movie about Twitter? Or at least the trailer to that movie! Check out the exclusive (parody) trailer for "The Twit Network" right here on Rated Awesome!

Seriously, though, there is something distinctive in all of this about social media and the cultural industry they represent emerging out of a college-age population. This phenomenon parallels in an interesting way how the motion picture industry in the United States emerged out of an immigrant, largely Jewish population.  According to Harold Innis, as James W. Carey has explained, monopolies of knowledge (media) lead to marginalized, excluded groups pioneering and embracing alternate modes of communication that can break the monopoly.  That's an economic metaphor, true, but it's pure media ecology.

Hot Pstromi

So, over at Congregation Adas Emuno last Friday night we were fortunate to have with us special musical guests Yale Strom and his klezmer band, Hot Pstromi.

Klezmer is the soul music for Ashkenazic Jews, that is, Yiddish-speaking Jews originating from Germany and Eastern Europe (that includes me, in case you were wondering).  Oy!  And in recent years, klezmer has become popular outside of Jewish circles as a distinctive type of ethnic music, and insofar as it crosses various cultural boundaries, a kind of world music.  Anyway, don't ask me, go ask Mr. Wikipedia if you want to know more:  Klezmer entry.

 So, I did up a bunch of blog posts about Yale and his band over on the Adas Emuno blog, and I thought I'd put together the highlights for you in a single post here on Blog Time Passing. 

So, let's take a listen, shall we?  Here's a video courtesy of JLTV's YouTube channel.

That's Yale Strom on violin, Elizabeth Schwartz singing and Lou Fanucchi on accordian performing "Ben Avrameni".  And here's some more Hot Pstromi, performing "Getshinke" with traditional Yiddish lyrics set to music by Mr. Strom:

And here they'e performing Avram Goldfadn's "Rozhinkes Mit Mandln":

And this is "Shpilt Mir Op Dem Naye Sher," a traditional Yiddish piece:









And for one more helping of Hot Pstromi, here's Yale Strom on violin, with friends, playing klezmer music at Festival Zachor in Białystok, Poland:

You might say he played Bialystock to the max--unless he brooks no puns...  And before we leave good old Bialystock, here's an interview with Yale Strom about klezmer music, and bringing the old country back to the old country:





This just gives you a taste of the performance Yale and his band served up for us last Friday night, but it left me saying, klezmer bist du schoen (if the Andrews Sisters reference doesn't do it for you, then, well, oy!).