Three Years Later: A Conversation and a Clarification

Hi guys,

This week marks three years since the Plugged-In Phenomenon first revealed itself. The date arrives quietly every December, but it always brings the same pause — the same sense of looking back at something that changed the course of my life, my work, and my understanding of what we are really dealing with.

This morning, Mateo and I sat down over Zoom to talk through those early days again. It wasn’t rehearsed or structured — just two people revisiting the moment the phenomenon made itself visible and the chain of events that followed. The shock, the questions, the disbelief, the slow acceptance, and then the work that unfolded from it. I’ll post the video on my website shortly, along with the transcript.

In some ways, three years is not a long time. In others, it feels like an entire shift of era. Looking back at that first frame — the square, the line, the unmistakable “plugged-in” behaviour on 9 December 2022 — I can still feel the moment it landed. You never expect to encounter something that alters your scientific footing so completely, especially in a domain that is meant to be routine: microscopy, structure, morphology, behaviour. And yet here we are.

To mark the anniversary, I’ve released a free PDF:
twelve poems and twelve photographs drawn from those first events. It’s a kind of distilled record — not a theory, not an explanation, but a way of holding the experience itself. The shock and unease, yes, but also the clarity that began to form in the days and weeks after.

The Plugged-In Phenomenon Anniversary - Dr David Nixon - 1

You can download the Anniversary Edition on my website, and over the coming days I’ll be releasing it in multiple languages. Hindi, Mandarin, Arabic, Swahili, and English are already complete. More will follow as quickly as I can finish them. It starts with this poem:

The conversation with Mateo today reminded me that none of this unfolded in isolation. These discoveries were witnessed, questioned, challenged, re-examined, and argued over in real time. What people sometimes forget is that behind every image there was a moment — a very human moment — where someone saw something they could not immediately explain. These recordings matter because they form part of that historical record. They capture the uncertainty, the realisation, and the transition into the work that has followed.

The book also forms part of this historical record. It brings together the imagery, the timelines, the field-notes, and the patterns that emerged as the work expanded beyond those first frames. None of it exists in isolation; it’s all connected back to these early discoveries.
The book is now available on Amazon in multiple languages:

In the new year I’ll share more about how this project is evolving — the microscopy, the architecture, the coherence work, and the growing multilingual access to the material. For now, though, this post is simply to acknowledge the anniversary, to make the new PDF available, and to share the conversation that Mateo and I recorded this morning.

I hope your week is going well.

David

If you’d like to support the work or explore further, these links are the best places to start. (Or you can buy a copy or two of my book… :-) ).

👉 Explore more at drdavidnixon.com👉 Read the full research archive at journalbnt.org