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 world is becoming one big shopping mall, with everyone consuming the same products and adapting the same behaviors
What's the Latest Development? California-based UberMedia has launched UberAds, a platform that sends ads to customers' mobile devices based on their publicly-available social media data -- from sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest -- as well as their (optional) GPS location. Using this ...
What's the Latest Development? Once considered a pioneer in digital publishing when he offered a short story solely in e-book format back in 2000, Stephen King has announced that his latest novel, Joyland, will be released solely as a physical book starting June 4. Although Amazon does have it ...
What's the Latest Development? Among many other culinary distinctions, Italy is known for its high-quality cured meats, which carry the unique signatures of the areas where they're created. However, many of them have been banned in the US for decades, often turning meat-loving tourists into ...
What's the Latest Development? A survey of over 1,500 people in 10 countries suggests that when it comes to automation and the car buying and driving experience, more people are for it than against it. Cisco's Customer Experience Report reveals that 50 percent of respondents would buy their car ...
What's the Latest Development? Researchers at Lancaster University have developed a video advertising system called Sideways that can change the ads it displays based on the eye movements of shoppers passing by. Senior researcher Andreas Bulling says the system uses a single camera to "[detect ...
What’s the Latest Development? In Argentina, the inflation rate has pushed up the price of goods 24 percent each year. This devaluation Argentina’s peso has forced Argentinians to look for a more stable currency to invest in. To compound this problem, last year the Argentine government placed ...
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says his country will not appreciate its currency for the foreseeable future while it slowly sells off its dollar reserves; Paul Krugman says a yuan appreciation would boost the world economy. "'I don’t think the yuan is undervalued,' Wen said at a press conference in ...
Discussions of China tend to focus on size – a nation of over 1.3 billion people certainly deserves attention from business and investors worldwide. But, ‘total’ numbers reveal little about underlying social and market dynamics nor the opportunities they may present. China is undergoing a ...