Discourse, Dialogue, and Democracy

A Symposium Sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics
Co-Sponsored by the
New York Society for General Semantics
Media Ecology Association
International Bateson Institute
Tomkins Institute
404 Festival of Art and Technology
October 3-5, 2025
The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003

We welcome papers and proposals that fit the symposium theme or that otherwise relate to the topics of general semantics, linguistics and semiotics, media ecology, communication and culture, science and the empirical method, epistemology and phenomenology, cybernetics and systems theory, technology and society, art and perception, cognition and consciousness, evolution and emergence, health and human potential, etc.

Featuring the 73rd Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
To Be Delivered By
Tristan Harris

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.

Send papers, proposals, & inquiries by August 18th to

Lance Strate via President at GeneralSemantics.org