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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The idea that actions that topple dictators are repeatable, from the Arab Spring to China
What's the Latest Development? A Wisconsin engineer who wishes to be known only as "Joe" has successfully created a low-end version of the 3D printed Liberator handgun originally designed by Defense Distributed, which had released its schematics online earlier this month before the US State ...
Note: This is an edited version of a Praxis post originally published on December 21, 2012. The preacher in Ecclesiastes was wrong: there is something new under the sun, or at least something new on the horizon. This week, with two cases to be argued and decided by the Supreme Court, we are ...
He billed his first presidential visit to Israel as a listening tour, but it turns out Barack Obama is doing quite a bit of speaking as well. On his first day in the Holy Land, the president was all about the love: I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic ...
The student center at Brooklyn College will be abuzz Thursday evening at 6:30 when two speakers propose boycotting, divesting and applying sanctions on Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. The run-up to the panel discussion has ignited a huge flap between supporters and opponents of Israel ...
Alison Klayman has a confession. When she started following Ai Weiwei around for her latest documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry , she knew nothing about him. Her roommate in Beijing was curating Ai's photography exhibit in 2008 and she needed a promotional video to accompany the show. Klayman signed ...
What is the Big Idea? Voters in Egypt went to the polls today for day two of the country's presidential election. Kate Woodsome from Voice of America, Asia curated Tweets, Twitpics and social media from the ground at this historic event. See below for images and multimedia. What's the ...
A tearful Vladimir Putin claimed a "clean" victory in the Russian presidential election. Critics, on the other hand, have charged that Putin's win is tainted by reports of widespread abuses, including so-called 'carousel voting' in which Putin supporters appeared en masse at one polling station ...
It's not easy to take on Vladimir Putin. Just ask Nikolai Maksimov, who was thrown in prison, or Boris Berezovsky, who was forced into exile. Both men are billionaire tycoons who didn't play by Putin's rules. On the other hand, if you have an $18 billion fortune and apparently promise to play ...
What's the Big Idea? 2011 was a year of revolution. Oppressive regimes from Tunisia to Russia were either toppled or challenged. Social unrest broke out in England and in countless communities in the United States, in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement. While it may be right to ...
In a previous post, Big Think speculated about what Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's death would mean -- for the Arab Spring, for the price of oil, for President Barack Obama, etc. These were questions worth asking, after all, since Qaddafi's death has seemed imminent for many months now. Today, we ...
Punk rock is not dead. In fact, Henry Rollins sees it everywhere around him. "The kid who throws his spaghetti from the high chair onto his father’s face, he is pushing back. He is sticking it to the man as he sees it. I like that." Rollins is best known as the frontman for the hardcore ...