Episode 303: Internet Operator
Permanently Moved
Who-or what-are you online? A profile, handle, podcast, avatar, or AI persona can be addressed, remembered, praised, criticised, and made socially present. But it is not quite identical to the person behind it. This episode of Permanently Moved is an hour-long audio essay on digital identity, personal branding, social media, puppetry, platform culture, and AI. It argues that online identity is best understood not as performance or authenticity, but as animation: a figure brought to life through an operator, audience, and apparatus. Moving from The Brand Called You and main character energy to...
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Episode 302: Monsters In The Mirror
Permanently Moved
What are large language models, really? A genuinely different frame for what AI is, where it came from, and what it means to live alongside it. This episode of Permanently Moved is an hour-long audio essay on artificial intelligence, agency, and the history of computing that made LLMs possible. The essay moves from the invention of the mirror to double-entry bookkeeping, the printing press, the Manhattan Project, the transistor, and the particular civilisational strangeness of ChatGPT and its successors. It argues that the question everyone is asking about AI "is it intelligent?" is a trap,...
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Pre-Flight: The New Container
Permanently Moved
Permanently Moved is back! Six months of silence, time in a chrysalis, and now a changed format. This is the wake-up episode. Before Episode 302 drops in your feed, Jay explains what happened after finishing the biggest creative project of his life — and what the show looks like from here. Permanently Moved is now quarterly. Four audio essays a year, longer and more considered. Less treadmill, more terrain. And for the first time, each episode comes with a print companion: a physical zine, posted to you as part of your membership. Episode 302 - Monsters in the Mirror - is next up in the...
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2520: Episode 301
Permanently Moved
8 years, 15 seasons; 301 episodes; over 25 hours of audio and roughly 290,000 words of script. 301 Permanently Moved was begun at age 32 and completed today, the day after I turned 40. One fifth of a lifetime, distilled into a body of work. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show!
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2519: Landing Sequence
Permanently Moved
As a nearly complete project, this show represents an enormous amount of effort and discipline. It’s been a serious creative commitment. Sustaining any single format for eight years is achievement enough for me. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show!
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2518: King of Mind
Permanently Moved
The glowing screen does not possess you. You merely have rehearsed the reflex of the infinite scroll. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show!
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2517: It's Beginning to Feel a Bit Like The Future
Permanently Moved
We must attempt to reclaim some proximity to the future. We have to stop strip-mining yesterday and act as though the future is already here. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show!
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2516: Tales Untold
Permanently Moved
It is the graft that reveals the craft. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show!
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2515: No-Go London
Permanently Moved
If life already feels precarious on your own high street, then a city like London must be ten times worse? Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show! Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo Subscribe to the Podcast:
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2514: More Distant Than Ever
Permanently Moved
Growing up in Britain in the 1990s, America felt like a country that existed only on television and in toy boxes. A place across the pond that shared a language, but also seemed so alien. Full Show Notes: Experience.Computer: Worldrunning.guide: Subscriber Zine support the show! Permanently moved is a personal podcast 301 seconds in length, written and recorded by @thejaymo Subscribe to the Podcast:
info_outlineWho-or what-are you online? A profile, handle, podcast, avatar, or AI persona can be addressed, remembered, praised, criticised, and made socially present. But it is not quite identical to the person behind it.
This episode of Permanently Moved is an hour-long audio essay on digital identity, personal branding, social media, puppetry, platform culture, and AI. It argues that online identity is best understood not as performance or authenticity, but as animation: a figure brought to life through an operator, audience, and apparatus.
Moving from The Brand Called You and main character energy to Bunraku theatre, VTubers, icons and idols, automata, platform metrics, and ChatGPT, Jay Springett asks what it means to be responsible for a figure online without being consumed by it.
SHOW NOTES
https://thejaymo.net/2026/08/11/303-internet-operator-permanently-moved/
START SELECT RESET
Issue 16 of Start Select Reset, the print companion to this episode, contains the full essay plus extra material not included in the audio.
Membership (£5/month, shipping included): https://thejaymo.net/support/
Buy the zine while copies last: https://thejaymo.net/zine
CHAPTERS
(00:00:00) Introduction
(00:01:06) DRAMATIS IDEAE
(00:02:20) Part 1. The Brand Called You
(00:09:34) Part 2. Main Character Energy
(00:16:21) Part 3. Figure and Function
(00:20:42) Part 4. The Booth and the Stage
(00:26:43) Part 5. The Suppressed Metaphor
(00:32:16) Part 6. The Animated Equation
(00:38:25) Part 7. The Face, the Mask, the Person
(00:40:47) Part 8. Metonymy, Icon, Idol
(00:46:16) Part 9. The Self-Moving Figure
(00:53:25) Part 10. Where the Operator Stands
(00:58:24) Part 11. The Speaking Image
(01:04:34) Part 12. Internet Operator
(01:08:03) Afterward
(01:08:44) Support the Show
(01:09:29) Credits
Mentioned in this episode
Tom Peters — “The Brand Called You”
Teri Silvio — Puppets, Gods and Brands
Kevin Munger — “The YouTube Apparatus”
Henryk Jurkowski — Aspects of Puppet Theatre
Charles Taylor
Heinrich von Kleist — “On the Marionette Theatre”
Mindar at Kōdai-ji
ChatGPT
Gordon White
Permanently Moved is a quarterly podcast written, recorded, and edited by Jay Springett.