Category Archives: public speaking

Kevin T. McEneaney introduces V. N. Alexander at Merritt Bookstore

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I was honored to be introduced by Smithfield Valley poet laureate & literary critic Kevin T. McEneaney at the Merritt Bookstore on Friday. Thanks to the wonderful staff for hosting. Extra signed copies are available by contacting orders[at]merrittbookstore[dot]com

McEneaney is the author of three books on American literature (Tom Wolfe’s America: Heroes, Pranksters & Fools, Russell Banks: In Search of Freedom, Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and the Birth of Gonzo) and two books of poetry, The Enclosed Garden and Longing, translated and published in French and dual-language Japanese. Some of his poems have been translated into Croatian, Ukrainian, and Russian, yet at present he remains banned in Russia. He is the author of ten chapbooks and over fifty encyclopedia articles in Encyclopedia Americana. He was awarded the Farrell Award for The Enclosed Garden (1991). Previous winners: AE (George Russell), W.B. Yeats, and Desmond Egan. His profile is in Marquise: Whose Who in America. He writes weekly reviews of classical music at The Millbrook Independent.  Click image to view video. 

 

 

Signing at Merritt Bookstore, Millbrook, NY Aug 21

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Dutchess County residents, meet V. N. Alexander on Friday August 21 from 4:00- 5:00 PM signing copies of her latest novel, The Girlie Playhouse.  Special introduction by Kevin T. McEneaney.

Refreshments will be served.  Join us for this great end of summer event.

Listen to Alexander read the first chapter and answer questions on Woodstock’s own The Strange Recital.

 

What readers are saying about The Girlie Playhouse:

“A 21st century classic!”   “Beautifully written.”  “I devoured it.”  “I didn’t want it to end.”

V. N. Alexander, Ph.D., is a literary fiction novelist, writing about censored and controversial subjects with audacity, humor, and compassion. Her honors include the Washington Prize for Fiction for Smoking Hopes, Dallas Observer‘s “Best of 2003” for Naked Singularity, and the Literary Fiction Book Review award for Locus Amoenus, which was also a Dayton Literary Peace Prize nominee. Her latest is The Girlie Playhouse published by Heresy Press in 2026. Alexander is also a philosopher of science, author of The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature. She is a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center alum, former Public Scholar for the New York Council for the Humanities, and was a 2020 Fulbright Scholar

Kevin T. McEneaney is the author of three books on American literature (Tom Wolfe’s America: Heroes, Pranksters & Fools, Russell Banks: In Search of Freedom, Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and the Birth of Gonzo) and two books of poetry, The Enclosed Garden and Longing, translated and published in French and dual-language Japanese. Some of his poems have been translated into Croatian, Ukrainian, and Russian, yet at present he remains banned in Russia. He is the author of ten chapbooks and over fifty encyclopedia articles in Encyclopedia Americana. He was awarded the Farrell Award for The Enclosed Garden (1991). Previous winners: AE (George Russell), W.B. Yeats, and Desmond Egan. His profile is in Marquise: Whose Who in America. He writes weekly reviews of classical music at themillbrookindependent.com

Webinar: We Are Not Machines

Bimonthly presentations by VN Alexander critiquing the claim that Artificial Intelligence will soon deliver sentient computers; that Brain-Machine Interfaces will enable mind reading; or that Biotech can reprogram our genes to cure illness or give us superhuman abilities.

Live Online Classes begin Friday, September 19, from 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET and will be held the first and third Fridays in October, November, and December 2025.

For more information see, https://ipak-edu.org/registration/e/WE-ARE-NOT-MACHINES-Monthly-Webinar-with-Dr-Alexander-p606840829

Online Webinar Starts Soon: Human Purpose in an Age of AI and Biotech


15 week live online course
Tuesdays at 7PM EST starting Jan 7, 2025
$160
Instructor: Dr. V. N. Alexander
IPAK-EDU

As AI begins to demand more energy than a city the size of Pittsburgh, Google and Meta are planning to build their own nuclear reactors to power their chatbots that are capable of providing generic responses to prompts. Meanwhile, although not as fast as AI, human brains are capable of responding with greater accuracy and more originality, while expending no more energy than a light bulb.

Registration closed.  Check back next semester.

See sample talk about last year’s webinar.

 

In this new course, Dr. Alexander will refresh material from her two previous webinars: The Perils of Coding Humans: A Response to Transhumanism and We Are Not Machines, as well as investigate new claims made by the AI and Biotech industries.

What is intelligence? and what sort of processes result in people being able to act purposefully? What is the difference between artificial and biological intelligence? Can all creativity and purpose be reduced to physics, chemistry, and natural selection? Or can science add more to our understanding of what makes us human and life meaningful?

About the instructor

V. N. Alexander’s work focuses on the overlap between art and science. Her honors include a Fulbright Scholar grant (ITMO University, StP, Russia), a Rockefeller Foundation Residency (Bellagio, Italy), a public scholar position with the NY Council for the Humanities, a visiting researcher position at the Santa Fe Institute, a Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women Fellowship, an Art & Science Lab Residency (Santa Fe, NM), and the Alfred Kazin award for best dissertation at the Graduate Center, City University NY, which was published in 2011 as The Biologist’s Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization in Art, Literature and Nature. Alexander is a leading researcher in the field of Biosemiotics and she is a member of the distinguished group, the Third Way of Evolution. Her work on novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s contributions to the theory of the evolution of insect mimicry has been widely recognized. Her award-winning literary fiction novels include, Smoking Hopes (1996), Naked Singularity (2003), and Locus Amœnus (2015). A new audiobook of Naked Singularity, which explores many of the themes in this course, has just been release in 2024.

Recordings will be available if you miss a class.

Biosemiotics Takes on Transhumanism

In this lecture, which I presented on June 19, 2024 in South Africa, I use concepts from Biosemiotics to explain why Large Language Models (LLMs) and other kinds of AI fall short and will never be able to develop true, creative intelligence.  The problem is that AI uses only symbols, whereas biological systems use icons, indexes, and symbols.  These three types of biological signs function within a physical medium that defines how they can function based on similarity and proximity.

To hear my talk follow this link to the conference page, click on the video for June 19 and start at  3:13:53. The Q&A that follows end at 3:49:45

Held under the auspices of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the 24th annual Gathering took place at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, organized by Kobus Marais and Xany Jansen Van Vuuren.

The Perils of Coding Humans: A Response to Transhumanism


15 week live online course
Mondays at 12PM EST starting Jan 9, 2023  (Details for new course for 2025 coming soon.)
$180
Instructor: Dr. V. N. Alexander
IPAK-EDU

The September 12, 2022 White House Executive Order* pledges R&D funds to the biotech industry to enable it “to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way [emphasis added] in which we write software and program computers.” We may be glad of this implied admission that the biotech industry currently cannot “predictably program biology” nor effectively “write circuitry for cells,” as demonstrated by the failure of the COVlD-19 synthetic mRNA injections. But we may also be concerned that technocrats—who believe that such advances will be possible once they “unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence”—will continue to use us as lab monkeys as they pursue impossible goals.

Some see the issue as a battle between the ideologies of pure mechanism and spiritualism. As long as we see the problem this way, it might remain irreconcilable. In this course, we will use lessons learned from science—complex systems science, the philosophy of creativity, and Continue reading →

Is counting things always more “objective”?

Social science researchers employ so-called qualitative methods, such as case studies, interviews, documentary evidence, participant observation, and the quasi-quantitative method of survey research. Physical science researchers employ quantitative methods; they take measurements, collect and count data points, and formulate equations that model how systems change. The difference in methods is said to make the social sciences more subjective compared to the hard sciences. Interdisciplinary studies departments worldwide now offer courses combining quantitative and qualitative methods as a compromise intended to resist the privileging of one method over the other. In this talk, I will argue that we’ve been coming up with answers to the wrong question. Continue reading →

Who Owns the World? Co-operative Book Publishing

The state of platform cooperativism November 7-9, 2019 at the New School in NYC. Victoria Alexander, director at the Dactyl Foundation and editor of Dactyl Review, will speak on Saturday, Nov 9th about efforts to transform literary fiction publishing using a co-operative platform model.  2:45-4:15PM

The New School, The University Center, Room U304, 3rd Floor,  63 Fifth Avenue, NYC

Around the globe, we are starting to build an alternative economy that benefits the many, not just the few. Our passions, research, and projects challenge platform capitalism and chart a more democratic future. We show that an inclusive economy is not only necessary but already growing among us.

When starting a platform co-op, we have a much better chance at success if we rely on the support of our communities, established co-ops, incubators, co-op banks, unions, foundations, researchers, lawyers, technologists, and policymakers. “Who Owns the World?” is about building connections between these groups, finding the much-needed support, and learning from each other. For the first time, this event will bring together many of the most active players in this movement worldwide to share updates and insights, instigate initiatives, make new friends, lift each other up, plan next steps, and find new business partners as well as funders.

Celebrating 10 years of digital labor conferences at The New School, “Who Owns the World?” will feel the pulse of platform cooperativism, worldwide.

Continue reading →