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.
Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.
Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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The development of automated machines that can take the place of humans
“I believe the children are our future.” Never has a more brazen tautology graced the opening line of a Top 40 song. But when Whitney Houston popularized these words in her 1986 hit, she gave voice to an orientation that seems to be in retreat today. For Douglas Rushkoff, author of a new ...
Real birds are capable of impressive acrobatic flying maneuvers because they can precisely control their wing motions. It is very difficult to replicate that with a robot because bird-like maneuvers require an extremely lightweight platform. The robot raven in this video, however, is built out ...
The video below demonstrates the handiwork of DARPA-funded dexterous robotic hand hardware. The adaptable, adaptable, low-cost robots that can use a wide range of human tools to assist in dangerous defense missions. The hand in this video was developed by iRobot of Bedford, Mass., with support ...
This 80-milligram robot is not only the size of an insect, it also maneuvers like flies with the help of piezoelectric muscles and rotating joints. Watch here: Watch more videos like this from Science Magazine.
If you think about gorillas, it seems that the only way that gorillas can save their species is to conspire and gang up against humans. They’re not going to do that. They are not able to do that. If you think about the other side of this coin -- humans have not conspired against gorillas. We ...
What's the Big Idea? The future is a difficult thing to grasp, and not just because we can't see it. Bringing innovation to life requires imagination, resourcefulness, the sort of limitless creative ambition we today associate mainly with science fiction writers. It wasn't always this way. As ...
In a recent Big Think interview with venture capital expert Bruce Gibney, we saw what technologies stand to go through revolutionary growth. 1) A rash of new companies have sprung up to meet the demand for transportation of crew and cargo to orbit and to the International Space Station left ...
Increasingly innovative computer scripts are being created that automate entire criminal processes—processes that, in the past, used to require human intervention. Don’t like your boss? Threaten to tell his wife about the affair with his secretary unless he pays you to keep quiet. The problem ...
Jason Silva is an optimist. With a capital O. His optimism hits you full force the moment you meet him – the broad, beaming grin, the reassuring handshake . . . no, before that, in the form of multiple enthusiastic exclamation points in his every email. More specifically, he’s optimistic about the ...
What's the Big Idea? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson believes in the power of science -- so much so that he gets hate mail for it. From children. As director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, Tyson made the controversial decision to remove references to ...
We have all experienced “dehumanizing” technology – software or hardware that seems to diminish our ability to communicate with others or to function effectively in the world. Technology that creates new boundaries between people rather than erasing old ones. With this in mind, Big Think is ...
What's the Big Idea? Visit Gizmodo, Wired, TechCrunch, or Engadget, or talk to "epiphany addict" Jason Silva, and a bracing wave of techno-optimism will wash over you. The future, you'll feel, will be a place of seamless, harmonious interconnectedness in which humans, separated for millennia by ...
What's the Big Idea? A lot of exciting gadgets have been unveiled so far at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Yet none of these products have anywhere near the transformative potential of what Peter Diamandis unveiled. Diamandis introduced the new X Prize competition to "develop a ...