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Permanently Moved is an audio-only podcast about digital culture, internet culture, and the changing shape of the web. Written, recorded, and edited by Jay Springett since 2018, this long-running podcast explores artificial intelligence, social media, world-running, online communities, and life in the shadow of the stack.
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  2. Episode 302: Monsters In The Mirror

Episode 302: Monsters In The Mirror

Mar 2, 2026

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, and it tries to ask a better one. 

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CHAPTERS

(00:00:02) Introduction
(00:00:34) Monsters In The Mirror
(00:01:00) Part 1. The Mirror of Modernity
(00:05:33) Part 2. The State’s Gaze
(00:11:28) Part 3. Paper Truths
(00:17:27) Part 4. Crystal Fire
(00:26:13) Part 5. The Silicon Mirror
(00:31:54) Part 6. World(view) in the West
(00:35:28) Part 7. Haunted Habitats
(00:40:45) Part 8. Thinking Machines
(00:49:28) Part 9. Abracadabra
(00:54:26) Part 10. Monsters in the Mirror
(00:59:03) Afterward
(01:00:05) Support the Show
(01:00:48) Credits

Mentioned in this episode

Tyson Yunkaporta — Sand Talk
James C. Scott — Seeing Like a State
Marion Fourcade & Kieran Healy — The Ordinal Society
Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo — Exocapitalism
Marshall McLuhan — The Gutenberg Galaxy
Walter Ong — Orality and Literacy
Jean Baudrillard — Simulacra and Simulation
Nick Land — Fanged Noumena
Monica Gagliano — Thus Spoke the Plant
Benedict Anderson — Imagined Communities
Bayo Akomolafe
Gordon White — Rune Soup

Permanently Moved is a quarterly podcast written, recorded, and edited by Jay Springett. 

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SHOW NOTES

https://thejaymo.net/2026/03/02/302-monsters-in-the-mirror-permanently-moved/

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