Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age

Exploring solarpunk as a memetic engine, cultural fracking, and how worlds are the medium of the 21st century.

I'm joined by Jay Springett (@thejaymo), solarpunk steward, world-runner, and author of thejaymo.net. Together we dig into how cultural fracking has left our collective imagination hollowed out, what it means to treat worlds as a creative medium, and why protocols and infrastructures may be the real artforms of the future.

We discuss copyright battles from Napster to Disney to AI training data, the parallels between hip-hop sampling and machine learning, and how solarpunk thrives not just as an aesthetic but as a generative memetic engine for imagining alternate futures. Along the way, Jay traces a line from D&D in 1974 to MUDs to corporate canon world-running, unpacks "protocol art" as artistic gestures upstream of production, and argues that futuring itself can provide a laboratory for testing ideas for what comes after the fall of empires, because as Jay tells us, you can't fight a culture war unless you're making culture.

-it's ya boi

Links:

Jay Springett:

• https://thejaymo.net
• https://x.com/thejaymo
• https://bsky.app/profile/thejaymo.net

Your Host, Lance "it's ya boi" Robotson:

• https://robotson.media
• https://x.com/robotson
• https://bsky.app/profile/robotson.media