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The Maelstrom: Marshall McLuhan/ Edgar Allen Poe?
I know that this may be a dumb question, but i'll ask it anyway.
Can we get any pics of these buttons, to have a little clue what they look like, beside the text descriptions?--[[User:Ps2aphex|Guts]] 08:05, 27 March 2007 (PDT)
== The Maelstrom: Marshall McLuhan/ Edgar Allen Poe? ==
Possible connection, perhaps--
"The Descent into the Maelstrom" is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe; it also influenced the twentieth-century thinker Marshall McLuhan, whose studies of the effects of mass media on the human psyche were highly controversial in the mid 1900s.
Here's an excerpt from the article about Poe's short story on Wikipedia:
"It is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb. The story is told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old - "You suppose me a very old man," he says, "but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs form a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves." The narrator, convinced by the power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of the "old" man's recent fishing trip with his two brothers. Their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother is pulled into the waves; the other is driven mad by the horror of the spectacle. At first the narrator only sees hideous terror in the spectacle, and feels helpless. Then, as a moment of revelation, he sees that the Maelstrom is a beautiful and awesome creation. Then, observing how objects around him are pulled into it, he deduces that "the larger the bodies, the more rapid their descent" and that spherical-shaped objects are pulled in the slowest. He abandons ship and holds on to a cylindrical barrel until he is saved several hours later. He tells the narrator the story without any hope that he will believe it"
The movie/documentary "McLuhan's Wake" also talks alot about the "maelstrom" of mass media, modernity, and technological advancement-- McLuhan himself warned of the consequences of these new phenomena on humanity.
Any thoughts?