Internet and struggle.

I am extremely unskilled on the Internet. But along with one other friend we run a successful blog. It is weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com Please check it out. But here is my frustration. The left and radical movement seem to have just about missed the opportunity that exists for spreading ideas and building a movement using the Internet. Sending each other messages is a different thing from building a movement. Of course a movement cannot be built with the Internet alone. But use of the Internet, which gives access to millions, is absolutely essential in this period. I would go as far as to say that any group or individual who is working the same today as they were ten years ago has completely missed the boat. Or to express my frustration in the way I would if we were talking face to face and to use more of my Irish vernacular, I would say anybody or any group which is working the same today as they were ten years ago is a "f...... idiot." I am trying to make some progress here by stating things sharply. Readers who like this blog, and our readers have gone up by six fold in the last year, please contact us and see what is possible. We have more and more readers but we need help in terms of writing.

I think it was Marx who said that all human life was of interest to him. I am not sure if it was Marx or not. Or maybe I made it up myself and said it was to Marx. Well it is only fair. Did he not give me a few good quotes. I am only returning the favor. Clinging on to quotes just because you happened to think of them yourself is a bit individualist, a bit bourgeois, don't you think. We should share them around or as the man said in that movie who was using another guy's poetry to woo his girl friend, poetry does not belong to those who wrote it but to those who need it. A good one. You would have to watch that boy alright.

Anyway here is what I want to say. For all those people out there who have good Internet skills we need your help. As a first step please spread the contents of our blog far and wide and please link it to as many other blogs as possible. Also any other ideas to spread word of our blog would be very much appreciated. Please help us with this.

But back to writers. We want all human life to be covered on our blog. Did you see today that google has millions of books in its digital library. These contain two billion words and phrases drawn from 5.2 million books published during the past 200 years. Incredible. Wee Joyce would have been beside himself when he would have realized what he could have done with all these words. And on top of that he made up his own in Finnegan's Wake. 129 million books have been published since the invention of the printing press. In 2004 Google began making electronic copies of them. So far it has 15 million comprising more than two trillion words in 400 languages. Staggering.

Researchers are going through this gigantic data base and they are seeing all sorts of trends. For example the word enemy increases dramatically during the second war, the word god drops dramatically from its peak usage in the 1840s. And in terms of other more mundane things the word sausage peaks in the 1940s and sushi takes off in the 1980s.

I have not the skills but what would be great would be to go through this data base for words related to workers' struggle. For example, trade unions, socialism, shop stewards, strikes, solidarity, and on and on and on. This data base also contains short phrases of up to five words and how often they were used in each year going back to 1,500. This data base if properly approached can give a living picture of society and therefore also of the class struggle. I would appeal to our readers with skills. Check this out and send us your conclusions.

Looking forward to getting some help with our blog.

Sean.