Media theory

• Walter Benjamin (1935) - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
• Harold Innis (1950) - Empire and Communications (book)
• Marshall McLuhan (1964) - Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (book)
• Niklas Luhmann (1975) - "Systemtheorie, Evolutionstheorie und Kommunikationstheorie", in: Soziologische Gids 22 3. pp.154–168
• Paul Virilio (1977) - Speed and Politics (book)
• Vilém Flusser (1985) - "Ins Universum der Technischen Bilder" [1]
• Friedrich Kittler (1986) - Grammophon Film Typewriter (book)
  Kittler's central project is to "prove to the human sciences [..] their technological-media a priori", or in his own words: "Driving the spirit out of the humanities", a title that he gave a work that he published in 1980. He sees an autonomy in technology and therefore disagrees with Marshall McLuhan's reading of the media as "extensions of man": "Media are not pseudopods for extending the human body. They follow the logic of escalation that leaves us and written history behind it. Consequently, he sees in writing literature, in writing programmes and in burning structures into silicon chips a complete continuum: "As we know and simply do not say, no human being writes anymore. [..] Today, human writing runs through inscriptions burnt into silicon by electronic lithography [..]. The last historic act of writing may thus have been in the late seventies when a team of Intel engineers [plotted] the hardware architecture of their first integrated microprocessor." [2]
• Derrick de Kerckhove (1995) - The Skin of Culture (book)
• Siegfried Zielinski (2005) - Deep Time of the Media (book)
• Jonathan Beller (2006) - The Cinematic Mode of Production: Towards A Political Economy of the Society of the Spectacle (book)
• Erkki Huhtamo - Archeology of Media Art
  Media archaeology is an emerging critical approach Professor Huhtamo has pioneered (together with a few other scholars) since the early 1990's. It excavates forgotten, neglected and suppressed media-cultural phenomena, helping us to penetrate beyond canonized accounts about media culture. Huhtamo pays particular attention to the "life" of topoi, or clichéd elements that emerge over and over again in media history and provide "molds" for experiences. What may seem new often proves to be just new packaging of ideas repeated during hundreds and even thousands of years.
• Sean Cubitt (2009) [3], [4]