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.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
The idea that the accelerating progress of technology will eventually create a new form of superintelligence
The singularity is a concept that was first coined by science fiction writer Vernor Vinge that says that eventually we will reach a point where we make runaway progress, and overnight everything will change. Progress will go faster and faster and faster for infinity as it were. Exponential ...
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 ...
Ray Kurzweil is the author of the recent book How to Create a Mind. The first question we have for him is "why create a mind?" There are three purposes of reverse-engineering the brain. One is to do a better job of fixing it and because that's a business opportunity. Being able to master the ...
We have heard many pronouncements about how technology will profoundly change our lives in the future, so many pronouncements, in fact, that technology has become a 21st century panacea. It is the answer to all of our problems. It is a problem-solving tool in and of itself. There is a chance ...
This past week at Singularity University has been stimulating, to the say the least. Everyone here is on the same wavelength: we’re thinking exponentially, dreaming up ways we can improve the world, and we’ve all been experiencing SU’s cross-disciplinary, future-oriented education, which I can ...
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 ...
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 ...
In February, 2011, a powerful IBM computer called Watson became the Jeopardy world champion. Immediately, the media went crazy with headlines about machines obliterating mankind. As a media professional, I am not at all surprised by this – the more powerful our machines become, the more our ...
The linear thinking model of traditional universities may have served our hunter-gatherer ancestors well. (An elk running through the forest at point A will be at point B when a hunter unleashes his spear, etc.) But recent technological discoveries have presented humanity with a new set of ...
Sponsored by: Ray Kurzweil is an expert at predicting the future. Some of his career highlights include foreseeing the fall of the Soviet Union, the invention of the Internet and a computer beating a man at chess. So what will the coming decades hold for us? In tracking our progress in the ...