Inventing the Future
Today's Big Idea: Humanizing Technology
Are video games making us dumber? More violent? Given that we spend a combined 7 billion hours a week playing video games, perhaps it's time to take a second, less punitive look at the technology and culture of games. Why are so many of us so drawn to them? A what might the world look like if we embraced the values of gaming?
Salman Rushdie argues that the gaming world permits a kind of revolutionary non-linearity ("telling the story sideways") in storytelling. Game designer Jesse Schell believes that film was "the literature" of the 20th century -- the medium that gripped the popular imagination and wouldn't let go. Likewise, video games will take over in the 21st century as the defining medium of a generation. And Jane McGonigal sees games as a way to change the world and become better, more resilient human beings.
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Can a Video Game Change Your Life?
What's the Big Idea? Up up down down left right left right B A start. Press these buttons in succession while playing any one of the more than 60 video games which recognize it and heavenly rewards will rain down upon you, from extra lives to infinite ammo to full-on God mode. Originally ... -
Video Games and the Future of Storytelling
Rushdie is fascinated by video games like "Red Dead Redemption," which allows gamers much more agency to choose the path they take through the narrative. Will all storytelling have to adapt to this new, looser narrative technique? -
Video Games: The Defining Medium of the 21st Century
Film became the literature of the 20th century. Likewise, video games will take over in this coming century, especially once they learn to listen to us. -
Three Tips for Innovators: Move Nimbly, Open Wisely and Fail Gracefully
How can small businesses flourish in today's disruptive age? Bestelling author Vijay Vaitheeswaran has three concise tips that make it easier for upstarts to take on the giants.
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Meet the Urban Datasexual
Dominic Basulto
Digital Thinker, Electric Artists
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Braingasm: How Porn "Shuts Down" Women's Brains
Megan Erickson
Associate Editor, Big Think
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Killing Creativity: Why Kids Draw Pictures of Monsters & Adults Don't
Sam McNerney
Science writer
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A Marriage Ruined by Monogamy
Pamela Haag
Essayist
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Why Top Innovators Make Time to Waste Time
Jason Gots
Associate Editor, Big Think
Latest
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In 1923, during an exhibition of his art collection that would become the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, two years later, Dr. Albert C. Barnes told an interviewer, “I am trying to do the biggest thing for Philadelphia that any one man has attempted.” Nearly nine decades later, the grand ... Read More
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MSNBC's Morning Joe is one of the few places on cable news where you can find genuine ideological cross-talk. It's not surprising then that the program hosted this week University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and co-author of the new book "The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands ... Read More
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What's the Latest Development? Scientists at the Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have genetically engineered a virus known as M13 to emit electricity when pressure is applied to it. "M13 is a natural power source, but researchers enhanced its output by genetically engineering the virus ... Read More
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Anxiety Creates Extra Tasks - And Problems Have you ever had one of those ‘super-productive’ days where you burn through all of your tasks and then feel... strangely hollow? This feeling arises because, as much as we hate to admit it, many of us define ourselves by our task list. When we don ... Read More
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As his ear continues to be bent by assorted British Government officials, spooks and former Ministers determined that he introduce further restrictions over disclosure of information in ‘sensitive’ court cases that affect National Security, perhaps Britain’s Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke might ... Read More
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Just around the corner from my desk something strange is happening. Miles and miles of hair is being teased into place, bucket loads of make-up are being applied and delicate feet are being squeezed into heels higher than some low rise buildings. As I haven’t been recruited into the Rocky ... Read More
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Take some standard tools for graphing data. Add the power of three-dimensional printing. Result: Data rendered not as a graph or chart, but as an object. A new frontier in the art of representing information, where it's turned into something not only comprehensible and beautiful, but touchable—an ... Read More
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The United States of America murdered an innocent man. But this is not the main reason we should be against capital punishment. Carlos DeLuna was put to death in 1989 for a murder in Corpus Christi, Texas. The victim, Wanda Lopez, was stabbed once through her left breast with a lock-blade buck ... Read More
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Several years ago University of California at Davis professor Dean Simonton conducted a study that examined more than three hundred creative geniuses born between 1450 and 1850. The list included thinkers Liebniz and Descartes, scientists Newton and Copernicus and artists Vinci and Rembrandt. He ... Read More
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The buzz around Facebook’s IPO tomorrow got me thinking about the future of web startups, and of entrepreneurship more generally. To get some clues, I reached out to Brad Feld—a managing director at Foundry Group, a cofounder of TechStars, and an avid marathoner (he has already run 21 marathons ... Read More
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Believe it or not, this post continues with my theme of Cartesian America. As I explained, the Cartesian/Lockean American understands science basically to be technology. Its point is to make free persons more secure, comfortable, and "autonomous" in their natural environment. That means, of ... Read More
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In 2005, Thomas Friedman elegantly pieced together the global frontier for readers in The World is Flat. A book that will go down in history as one that was right on the money, Friedman delineated the interconnectedness of our new world; an environment dramatically shaped by cutting-edge technology ... Read More
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Biotech Revolution
Scientists Build Electricity Producing Viruses
If current research proves fruitful, the homes and cities of the future may be powered by viruses. Berkeley Lab scientists have genetically engineered the M13 virus to output more power.
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green tech
Bicycles Are the Next Mobile Technology Platform
As more American cities warm to the idea of bicycle sharing programs, the bike may evolve into the ideal platform for gathering urban data on everything from traffic levels to heartbeat rates.
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Rethinking the Workplace
Does Mobile Computing Increase Productivity?
Access to mobile computing, to allow employees to check email outside of working hours, increases productivity up to a point. After that it just burns people out and makes them unhappy.
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Creative Boosts
Autonomous Robots Take to the High Seas
A new robotic sailboat aims to set navigation records while collecting data on marine life. In the future, such boats could be used for search and rescue operations and tsunami detection.
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Biotech Revolution
Mind-Controlled Robots Take Big Step Forward
A team of researchers at Brown University have taught a paralyzed woman to move a robotic arm with her mind, enabling her to take an independent sip of coffee for the first time in 15 years.
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Life in Space
Why We Probably Aren't Alone in the Universe
There is not much middle ground in the debate over whether life exists beyond planet Earth. Astronomers either believe the odds of life are impossibly rare or mundanely common.