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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Editor's Note: This article appeared on RealClearScience, and is paired with another that disagrees. Read that article here. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 9-0 decision, determined that biotechnology companies are not allowed to patent genes. This is a step in the right direction, but ...
As a staunch follower of Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say aligned himself with the tradition of classical political economy. However, he quickly diverged from Smith, creating his own brand of economics. This new definition centered around, what today is called, supply side economics. We’ve all heard ...
Technology companies can create enormous value, but what about jobs? Consider this analysis from Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, who spoke at a conference at Wharton in March 2013. According to a summary on Knowledge@Wharton, Brynjolfsson pointed out that ...
In a recent commencement address, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered ten suggestions to Princeton graduates ranging from “life is amazingly unpredictable...don’t be afraid to let the drama play out” to “call your mom and dad once in a while.” In between he offered some insights on the ...
“Workers of the world, unite!” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels bellowed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, largely in response to the Industrial Revolution (and Second Industrial Revolution) threatening not just the livelihoods but the very lives of many workers as profit reigned mercilessly over ...
What's the Latest Development? London-based junior doctors Kapil Sugand and Pedro Campos have created a system that displays 3D animated images of body parts on a large scale, giving medical students a whole new way to absorb information during a lecture. The system works through a type of ...
I think we should all take a moment to consider the news that everyone who continues to protest in Istanbul’s Taksim square is to be considered a terrorist. Let’s just consider what might happen if something similar ever happened in your home country. Now consider the implications of this in a ...
In the middle part of my book Drunk Tank Pink I spend quite a lot of time talking about what the presence of other people does to us. So would it matter, for example, if I’m playing chess against a computer or against a man or a woman or someone who’s tall or short or attractive or unattractive ...
Superman may have originally been envisioned as a telepathic bald villain bent on world destruction, but he was quickly transformed into a beloved hero of Depression-era America, with his all-American, Christian values of never doing wrong while always looking out for humanity. Christopher Nolan ...
What's the Latest Development? Last weekend, as part of its Project Loon, Google launched 30 balloons, which together helped provide basic broadband-like Internet access to 50 or so testers in the Christchurch area of New Zealand. The balloons hover about 12 miles above the Earth -- well out of ...
Performance artist Erdem Gunduz, now dubbed"The Standing Man", has inspired his Turkish compatriots by taking a stand, literally. He stood silent and staring in Istanbul's Taksim Square for hours, as hundreds of fellow protesters, both those around him and across the country, joined him in his ...
Today, The New York Times Science Times section published an article, "Firebrand for Science, and Big Man on Campus", about the career development of Bill Nye (aka, The Science Guy) from a beloved children's entertainer to a zealous advocate for science. As the Times article notes, this change ...
What's the Latest Development? Pakistani parents living abroad who want their children to have the benefit of religious instruction -- ideally without any potential radical influences included -- have the option of paying a teacher via one of hundreds of online sites based in their home country ...
We’re already used to describing our online social identity as a “digital tattoo” – something that we carry with us permanently wherever we go. So what if it were now possible to get a real-life digital tattoo that would extend our online social identity into the physical world as well? In its ...
What's the Latest Development? Going live this week is what may be the world's first reality show that won't air on TV: @SummerBreak follows a group of Los Angeles-area teens as they enjoy their last summer before attending college in the fall. The eight-week series will consist entirely of a ...