A Study On The Media Thoughts Of Derrick De Kerckhove-Mcluhan's Inheritor

With the rapid development of media technology in the new era of Internet, the media technology now exerts an increasingly great influence on people and the society. Faced with such social reality, we have to think about it seriously and theoretically. With Marshall Mcluhan as one of its most important representatives, Toronto School of Communication established a new research field in the western communication history, which made an analysis of human civilization in terms of the historical development of media technology. And Derrick de Kerckhove, the leading figure among the third generation of the school, was considered as Mcluhan's inheritor. He inherited Mcluhan's media theories and also developed those media thoughts under the background of Internet age. His media thoughts represented the school's latest development and provided us with some important enlightenment in the new era.The paper is consisted of 8 parts as follows:Chapter 1 is the introduction of the paper, which contains the background of the study, the literature review, the research method and the meanings and shortcomings of the study. Chapter 2 gives the detail information of Derrick and points out his role as Mcluhan's inheritor in the academic field. Chapter 3 talks about the academic origins of Derrick's media thoughts, which is composed of the introduction of the theories of Toronto School of Communication and the general media thoughts of Marshall Mcluhan. Chapter 4 is the introduction and analysis of Derrick's media thoughts in terms of historical prospect compared with Mcluhan's. Chapter 5 is about Derrick's thoughts on oral tradition and spoken language. Chapter 6 is about Derrick's thoughts on electronic media, especially TV. Chapter 7 focuses on Derrick's Thoughts on the Internet, which is made up of 3 parts, namely, When TV and computer meet in the Internet; Collective Intelligence and Connected Intelligence; Cyberculture in the Virtual Reality. The last part of the paper is the epilogue, which gives a general idea based on the previous chapters.