Rogue Icons

How do individuals and societies remain coherent when their model of reality changes faster than their ability to adapt? That question has sat quietly beneath much of my recent work. It sits beneath The Outlier Series. It sits beneath the Adaptive Interface Model (AIM). And, intentionally or not, it also sits at the heart of a new paper released today from John Priestland and the team at uNHIdden titled Preparing for Disclosure: A Public Health Framework for Paradigm-Shifting Revelations.

In recent weeks, Pope Leo has emerged as one of the most unexpected voices in the global debate around artificial intelligence. His concern is not simply economic, though the economics are already beginning to look ominous. Nor is it merely ethical. It cuts far deeper than that. Again and again – in his first encyclical, ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (‘Magnificent Humanity’) Pope Leo XIV returns to a single underlying theme: that humanity risks externalising too much of itself into machines.

Part 1: Contact in the Desert The Tankwa Karoo - a vast semi-desert basin in South Africa’s Northern Cape. For the first time in years, I am in a place with no signal, no WiFi, no informational current demanding my attention. There’s just dust, inches deep, the beguiling vista of open desert, and – stretching into the distance – an encampment, a temporary town, designed to house 11,000 people for a little over a week. I had come to AfrikaBurn with mixed feelings.

The Danger of Rushing from Anomaly to Certainty (Photo by Bobby on Unsplash) Something is changing. Not just in the UFO conversation, but in the wider architecture of reality itself – or at least in our collective willingness to question the assumptions that have underpinned it for the past century. Ten years ago, serious discussion of UFOs or non-human intelligence existed largely at the fringes. Today, former intelligence officials testify before Congress.

Over the past week, I have tried to put together a piece – a final Lock – that synthesises the culmination of The Outlier Series and the launch of the EXO Institute on 7th April - whose agenda I detailed here. I wanted to get it written and posted before I head into the wild for a few days. But despite multiple drafts – none of which captured the ambition I had for this final Lock – I have decided to shelve it until my return.

Last week marked the culmination of a project my co-founders[1] and I have been working on for more than two years: the launch of the EXO Institute. On Tuesday 7 April, at Ladbroke Hall in London, more than 200 people gathered for the opening of something I have had in mind for a long time. In many ways, EXO is the action component of everything I have been exploring in this column through The Light Beyond the Mountains and, more recently, The Outlier Series.[2] That timing was deliberate.

(Photo: Greg Rakozy/Unsplash) Lock 12 – The Wrap Lock Rewriting the Architecture of Reality This series has been, at its core, an inquiry into anomalies. Not as curiosities to be explained away, but as data points that resist assimilation into our current models of reality.

(Photo by Cash Macanaya on Unsplash) Over the past decade, the public conversation around unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) has shifted in ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. What was once confined to the margins – a mixture of anecdote, speculation, and occasional military leaks – has moved, gradually but unmistakably, into the open. Congressional hearings have been held. Intelligence reports have been published.

(Photo: Greg Rakozy/Unsplash) LOCK 11 — The Axiology Lock: The Question of Value in a Learning System On the morning of September 26, 1983, a duty officer at a Soviet early-warning facility south of Moscow faced a decision that could have ended human civilisation. His name was Stanislav Petrov. The computer system he was monitoring suddenly reported that the United States had launched a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

The Real Story Is Bigger Than Aliens (Photo by Brian McMahon` on Unsplash) Ten days ago – in what seems like a world away from the present meltdown in the Middle East – President Donald Trump announced that he would direct U.S. government agencies to begin releasing classified material relating to UFOs, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), and extraterrestrial life – a move that immediately reignited one of the most persistent and controversial questions of the modern era.