We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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What's the Latest Development? Researchers at several different organizations are working on delivery systems that will enable customers to receive packages while they are on the move. One of these systems, TwedEx from Microsoft Research, sends its parcels via a chain of individuals whose ...
What's the Latest Development? A Kickstarter campaign launched last week by the team at the public radio show "Planet Money" to raise funds for a special series met and blew past its goal of $50,000 in a single day. With six days left, the fund currently stands at over $300,000, proving to the ...
What's the Latest Development? This month, Hieroglyph, a collaboration between science fiction author Neal Stephenson and the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, launched a Web platform that invites participants to work together on the kinds of future visions last ...
What's the Latest Development? While experts usually rely on polls, gross domestic product, and other indicators to determine happiness among large groups, a team at the University of Vermont decided to look towards a much more immediate source of data: Twitter's Gardenhose feed, which produces ...
What's the Latest Development? Two iOS apps developed at the University of Rochester's Human Computer Interaction program provide immediate assistance to the sensory-disabled by calling upon the many anonymous microworkers online. VizWiz allows blind users to take a photo of something that needs ...
What's the Latest Development? A small group of people in the German city of Wuppenstal represents one of a growing number of "hackerspaces" around the world that are coming together to fix items, such as vacuum cleaners and toasters, that would normally have been tossed out. Interestingly, this ...
What's the Latest Development? This weekend, people from all over the world and the International Space Station will take part in the second annual International Space Apps Challenge, hosted by NASA. The apps refer to 50 problems -- grouped into software, hardware, data visualization, and ...
What's the Latest Development? Investigators looking into Monday's twin explosions at the Boston Marathon have taken the unusual step of issuing an open call for any photographic or video media captured by spectators before, during and after the event. Police commissioner Ed Davis says that even ...
What's the Latest Development? On Tuesday, attendees at the TEDMed conference in Washington saw the launch of CrowdMed, a Web-based platform that, as its name implies, enlists the help of the public to solve difficult medical cases. It works by giving participants points that they can use to bet ...
The original Mechanical Turk -- a fake chess playing machine -- is one of the more notorious hoaxes in history in that it fooled a lot of smart people for a long period of time. Designed to impress a Habsburg Empress, the "machine" beat many famous human opponents in chess, including Napoleon and ...
What's the Big Idea? Love your best friend? Good. Chances are you’re unconsciously emulating her. As humans, we all engage in mimicry, says Harvard physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis, and we usually copy the people to whom we are most connected. Watch the interview: ...
What's the Big Idea? Lionel Richie is a meme phenomenon. His music video “Hello” has inspired countless people to share both image and video pastiches of him all over the internet. The three most popular Lionel memes feature a juxtaposition of him, a biscuit, a teapot and a missing persons ...
What's the Big Idea? What does it mean to be connected in the 21st century? Hope, interdependence, and possibly the creation of a new consciousness, says Tiffany Shlain. Shlain is the founder of the Webby awards and creator of a new documentary, Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death ...
What's the Big Idea? In the 21st century, the intelligence of people will determine the future. Our free society can be the magnet for some of the world's brightest minds if we deliberately, carefully, and intelligently open ourselves up. Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, has ...
What’s the Big Idea? What do an art exhibit, live music, and a car manufacturer have in common? A lot more than you’d think. The Avant/Garde Diaries, a digital interview magazine sponsored by Mercedes Benz, just concluded their Transmission LA series at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los ...