About

Hi 👋 I’m Jay Springett

Computers, their consequences, and the worlds they make possible.

Strategist, producer, and cultural theorist. I work across technology, narrative, worldrunning, digital culture, artificial intelligence, and the internet.

I’m actively seeking a permanent role. Read what I’m looking for, or just get in touch.

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I started my career amidst the Global Financial Crisis in HR tech, before being acquired into a major research and advisory firm, where I became interested in strategy, operations, and the structures that allow organisations to scale. From there I moved into tech startup operations and product development. For the last decade I’ve worked across digital culture: producing games, advising on AI, researching autonomous worlds, crypto and DAO tooling, teaching, writing, and speaking internationally.

Most recently I served as Senior Producer / Operations Lead in video game development shipping narrative and systems-driven indie games. I’m a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I have taught at The New Centre for Research & Practice, and have guest lectured on several undergrad and post grad courses. I contributed research to the CMF 2023 Annual Trends Report and the BBC Future of Social Report as an expert.

I speak regularly at DevConnect, Sonar+D, Unsound Festival, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, on technology, narrative strategy, and digital culture.

Most of my work begins with worlds: that the defining medium of the 21st century is worlds. Persistent, participatory environments where techno-social systems, narrative, and community interact. I’ve spent years developing this thinking; nearly 40,000 words of the resulting essays live at worldrunning.guide. I’m finishing my first non-fiction book, The Web Was a Side Quest, which traces the history of worlds from Modernity’s origins, through Dungeons & Dragons and its influence on computers, up to the so-called Metaverse of today.

My long involvement in Solarpunk as a cultural movement has led to work on fandom dynamics and the nature of attention online — how communities form, sustain themselves, and shape cultural narratives across digital and physical spaces.

Long version

Jay Springett is a strategist, writer, and cultural theorist exploring computers and their consequences, and the worlds they make possible.

Jay is currently working on his first book “The Web Was a Side Quest”, which explores the pre-history of worlds; from Dungeons & Dragons to the so-called ‘Metaverse’. The book speculates on post-modernity and how the fusion of these ideas might actually be what computers have been for all along. His essay collection on worlds can be found online at worldrunning.guide.

Jay hosts two podcasts: the essay podcast Permanently Moved since 2018, which frequently tops iTunes top 50 charts around the world for personal journals, and Experience.Computer, an internet radio show about aphantasia, creativity, and the imagination.

He is recognised as an articulate voice in the emerging speculative genre of Solarpunk; a movement that seeks to answer and embody the question, “what does a sustainable civilisation look like, and how can we get there?”. Jay has described Solarpunk as a memetic engine, a tool to power the ‘re-futuring’ of our collective imagination. His Solarpunk short story ‘In The Storm, A Fire’ was long listed for the BSFA Award for Short Fiction and a Chanticleer International Book Awards Short Story Award Semifinalist.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a founding member of the decentralised creative exchange guild.is. In 2019 Jay Springett was selected as one of WeAreEurope’s 64 Faces of Europe and is also a member of the Global Regeneration CoLab.

Jay is currently an instructor at The New Centre and has guest lectured at universities worldwide. He speaks regularly about the future, technology and regenerative culture at conferences such as DevConnect (TR), Unsound Festival (PL), Sonar+D (ES), Fiber Festival (NL), Theorising the Web (US), and Transmediale (DE).

Originally from the most south easterly point in England, Jay now lives south of the Thames in Zone 6 London. He spends his time mostly behind a laptop screen but can sometimes be found behind a bass guitar in the slow sad country band Forest Bed.

Jay describes himself as an ‘artist without art’ and has been writing online under the handle @thejaymo since 2001.