老齐在导言中试着以十年为间隔，划分了七代明确的媒介思想家，蛮有参考价值。有意思的是，他还很严谨地把流亡巴西时期的弗拉瑟归到了第二代，回归欧洲时期的弗拉瑟归到了第四代。另外，最近一代包含了许煜和高世名。

In a flat temporal dimension—which is by now rather alien to the activities of those who think deep time—the evolution of concepts of media thinking has been under way for hardly more than a century. It has only been since the end of the Second World War, in other words, about seven decades, that scientific, theoretical, philosophical, semiological, and philological engagements with and through media have been articulated and processed as a distinct discursive field of their own—albeit ever more unmistakably and increasingly louder.

I have attempted a thought experiment in operationally grouping past and present media researchers and protagonists by generation—not least in order to temporally locate my own position in the context of this still fledgling genealogy of our field of intellectual energies. I have started from the presumption that we are presently well into the seventh generation of explicit media thinkers. Given the accelerated development of the interdiscursive field in the second half of the twentieth century, I decided to scale the shift in generations following decade markers. The generational groupings are not determined by the age of the thinker but rather on the basis of important differences each one has individually contributed to this heterogeneous field of knowledge. I have paid special attention to intelligible discourse effects that have been observed in Europe and that have also had an intelligible impact in Germany, for instance.

Early thinkers through the end of World War II: Theodor W. Adorno, Rudolf Arnheim, W. Ross Ashby, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Henri Bergson, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Bühler, Claude Cahun, Ernst Cassirer, Germain Dulac, Sergei Eisenstein, Gisèle Freund, René Fülöp-Miller, Aleksei Gastev, Siegfried Giedion, Fritz Heider, Max Horkheimer, Harold Innis, Ernst Kapp, Siegfried Kracauer, Lev Kuleshov, Harold Lasswell, Kazimir Malevich, Filippo T. Marinetti, Solomon Nikritin, John von Neumann, Charles S. Peirce, Luigi Russolo, Ferdinand de Saussure, Hermann Scherchen, Claude Shannon, Wilbur Schramm, Alan Turing, Dziga Vertov, Paul Watzlawick, Hermann Weyl, Fritz Winckel . . .

First mid- and postwar generation (explicitly active since the 1940s and 1950s): Günther Anders, Peter Bächlin, Roland Barthes, Max Bense, John Berger, Maya Deren, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Hoggart, Danièle Huillet, E. Katz/J. G. Blumler, Harry Kramer, Marshall McLuhan, Werner Meyer-Eppler, Abraham Moles, Raymond Queneau, Gilbert Simondon, Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, Wolf Vostell, Roman Wajdowicz, the Whitney Brothers, Norbert Wiener, Iannis Xenakis . . .

Second generation (explicitly active since the 1960s): Dieter Baacke, Nanni Balestrini, Gianfranco Baruchello, Konrad Bayer, Gilbert Cohen-Séat, Guy Debord, Umberto Eco, Vilém Flusser (in Brazil), Otto F. Gmelin, Jürgen Habermas, Helmut Heißenbüttel, Walter Höllerer, Friedrich Knilli, Ferdinand Kriwet, Gerhard Maletzke, Denis McQuail, Christian Metz, Franz Mon, Frieder Nake, Georg Nees, Ted Nelson, Nam June Paik, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Wolfgang Ramsbott, Jasia Reichardt, Gerhard Rühm, Marc Vernet, Paul Virilio, Peter Weibel, Oswald Wiener, Raymond Williams . . .

Third generation (explicitly active since the 1970s): Jean-Louis Baudry, Hans Belting, René Berger, Gábor Bódy, Jean-Louis Comolli, Gilles Deleuze, Mary Ann Doane, Franz Dröge, Hermann Klaus Ehmer, Thomas Elsaesser, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, VALIE EXPORT, Friede Grafe, Félix Guattari, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stuart Hall, Stephen Heath, Knut Hickethier, Horst Holzer, Stuart Hood, Eberhard Knödler-Bunte, Gerhard Lischka, Laura Mulvey, Friederike Pezold, Marcelin Pleynet, Hans Posner, Erwin Reiss, Michel Serres, Kristin Thompson, Sven Windahl, Peter Wollen . . .

Fourth generation (explicitly active since the 1980s): Jean Baudrillard, Peter Bexte, Teresa de Lauretis, Anne-Marie Duguet, Vilém Flusser (in Europe),

Dietmar Kamper, Friedrich Kittler, Sybille Krämer, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Werner Künzel, Pierre Lévy, Jean-François Lyotard, Joachim Paech, Miklòs Peternák, Hartmut Petzold, Hans-Ulrich Reck, Irit Rogoff, Avital Ronell, Florian Rötzer, Allucquére Rosanne Stone, Georg Christoph Tholen, Gerburg Treusch-Dieter, Christina von Braun, Michael Wetzel, Hartmut Winkler, Siegfried Zielinski . . .

Fifth generation (explicitly active since the 1990s): Marie-Luise Angerer, Peter Berz, Manuel Castells, Régis Debray, Manuel DeLanda, Bernhard Dotzler, Timothy Druckrey, Lorenz Engell, Wolfgang Ernst, Matthew Fuller, Ulrike Gabriel, Miriam Hansen, Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Hans-Christian von Herrmann, Erkki Huhtamo, Brenda Laurel, Thomas Y. Levin, Geert Lovink, Lev Manovich, Dieter Mersch, Brian Massumi, Alla Mitrofanova, Claus Pias, Nils Röller, Henning Schmidgen, Bernhard Siegert, Andrey Smirnov . . .

Sixth generation (explicitly active in the 2000s and beyond): Arianna Borrelli, Knut Ebeling, Alexander Galloway, Mark B. N. Hansen, Erich Hörl, Ute Holl, Yuk Hui, David Link, Mara Mills, Jussi Parikka, Matteo Pasquinelli, Patricia Pisters, Gao Shiming, Hito Steyerl, Frederik Stjernfelt, Eugene Thacker, Tiqqun, Joanna Zylinska, et al.