Cultural Layers

Cultural Layers models cultural production as a graph rather than a catalogue. A work is a layer. A commentary, a restoration, a reinterpretation, an analysis, or an adaptation is a new layer whose edges point back to the layers it draws on. The graph is additive: layers are not replaced by their derivatives, and the ancestry of any work is permanently legible from any of its descendants.

Attribution is a first-class property of the graph, not a courtesy that can be withdrawn. Every layer carries an immutable record of the layers it branches from, the contributors to each, and the terms under which the branching occurred. This resolves most of the practical disputes that cultural-provenance systems have historically struggled with — remix rights, restoration credit, adaptation chains — without resorting to rigid copyright logic.

AI participation is not prohibited; it is made accountable. An AI-produced layer must declare the model identity, the layers it was trained or prompted on, and the mandate it acted under. Downstream users see the provenance and can choose how to treat it. The same attestation primitive that underwrites regulated-AI deployments underwrites AI contributions to the cultural commons.

Governance belongs to the community of contributors. Rule changes — to branching semantics, attribution policy, or permitted AI classes — are proposed and ratified by the network rather than handed down by a platform operator. The protocol is deliberately minimal so that most decisions can be made at the layer level rather than the network level.