IN THE ETHER

A global archive of independent reviews of everything happening from the beginning of the millennium

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The website past its quarter century of existence in 2025 and for historical reasons the same Copyright Notice remains.

In those days, around the millennium, no more than 25 million people used the internet and the site pre-dates all social media.

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On 24 May 2024 we wrote:

"Non-AI and non-spoof stuff has its proper artistic signature

..... In 2024 nobody wants to find herself with inauthentic slop foisted on her. It goes against the trend of how the best will survive in this age of deception."

We believe this to be the first time AI generated material, in this case music, was referred to as slop.

(The rolling review has since been modified but the waybackmachine for 2024 will find it).

This is just a curio.

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The editor may be contacted at GlobalAR@aol.com.

(We have never used social media for messaging, following the view that personal communication should use open standards).

To take action against incompetence and deception.

This will reduce small injustices and have a knock on effect on bigger injustices by introducing a resurgent moral background.

Civilisation erasure can come to Europe through the absence of sufficient moral underpinning driving decisions.

The reduction of human interactions to each having a monetary value largely originated in America in the nineties but was only brought to Europe by the slow advent of digitisation from the mid-nineties.

Before that, once empires had gone especially, Europe's obsessions were Christianity, class, Enlightenment thinking (as in the rationality of Isaac Newton, for example) and culture.

Prosperous groups - but by no means exclusively - sought to be cultured, putting this ahead of monetary goals in terms of objective.

First to go was Christianity (its importance radically diminished in Britain in the years around the millennium, for example). Class lingered on for far too long acting as a comfort blanket for those who wished to blame other groups whilst quite other economic factors wreaked havoc.

AI slop and two decades of social media before it is the challenge to Enlightenment thinking.

Culture we can take charge of to mount a rearguard action.

The right is too stuck in pursuing the monetary values that came over in nineties.

The left is too stuck in class obsessions whilst trying to compete on monetary values.

Neither have political ideologies fit for the second quarter of the century.

Excessive obsession with digital culture is not the political way to go for Europe.

A digital car is more expensive and breaks down quicker than the largely analogue version. You do not need one to drive.

A digital cooker is more expensive and breaks down quicker than the largely analogue version. You do not need one to cook.

You do not need social media to relate to people or to understand the world around you.

You do need some moral or ethical drivers for sound existence.

Newtonian rationality