At the recent annual conference of the International Communication Association in Toronto, May 26th-29th, in Toronto, IGS President Lance Strate and Treasurer Thom Gencarelli met with the Chair of the Tomkins Institute, Phil Rose, to discuss possibilities of collaboration between our two organizations. As a result, the Tomkins Institute has agreed to join the list of cosponsors of our annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and the Symposium on Non-Aristotelian Perspectives, Ecological Approaches, and the Anthropocene to follow, being held on October 27th-29th in New York City. 

Sylvan Tomkins (1911-1991) was a student of general semantics scholar Samuel Bois, and his affect theory is consistent with and complementary of the work of Korzybski, Hayakawa, Johnson, and Bois, as well as Norbert Weiner and Gregory Bateson's cybernetics, and media ecology.

Gary David, a member of the Tomkins Institute's advisory board, gave a memorable online lecture on General Semantics and Epistemics for the IGS this past March. Tomkins Institute's Chair (the equivalent of president) Phil Rose is a Past President of the Media Ecology Association, as are Strate and Gencarelli. Rose is also the editor of Confronting Technopoly: Charting a Course Towards Human Survival, an anthology based on the work of Neil Postman. Rose is also the author of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums and Radiohead and the Global Movement for Change: 'Pragmatism Not Idealism'.

The Tomkins Institute joins the New York Society for General Semantics, the Media Ecology Association, the International Bateson Institute, and the 404 Festival of Art and Technology as cosponsors of our 2023 AKML and Symposium.