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.
Dispatches from the corridors of British power
As paralysis continues to grip the corridors of power in Brussels and Berlin, even the dark humour for which central Europeans are noted is in short supply. But at least, so the line goes, the Greeks managed "to get it right" at the ballot box on Sunday and won't be forced to vote in another ...
However hard most political leaders try, almost whatever they do in an attempt to look fashionable and plugged into the real lives of voters, it never seems to quite work. Whether it's stage-managed pictures of middle-aged politicians wobbling on bicycles at a European Union summit, or worse still ...
A quiet suburban street set in the leafy suburbs of Cheadle, Manchester, Northern England on Monday, witnessed a coming together of a former Leader of Manchester City Council, Labour MP Graham Stringer and a local Conservative MP with a strong independent streak, David Nuttall. This unlikely couple ...
As his ear continues to be bent by assorted British Government officials, spooks and former Ministers determined that he introduce further restrictions over disclosure of information in ‘sensitive’ court cases that affect National Security, perhaps Britain’s Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke might ...
I hope that the US authorities are keeping a close eye on proceedings in little old London town involving Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and that of one of his former closest colleagues, the editor of the now closed News of the World newspaper, Rebekah Brooks. She and her husband have now been ...
In Britain, the main Opposition Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband was pleased at his party’s strong progress in the mid term council elections in England – and especially Wales. Gaining well in excess of 800 councillors, while watching the wretched Nick Clegg (leader of the Liberal Democrats and a ...
United Nations Secretary General, Ban ki moon, was this week in Myanmar, or Burma as Western and some domestic opponents continue to call the country. It is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, yet Ban’s visit is likely to be recalled as being the most constructive so far by any ...
Iceland, a small, rocky outpost in the North Atlantic and home to just over 318,000 people is not a country that easily makes international headlines. But back in the 1970s, Iceland was a staple feature of the nightly news in the UK at least, as that country’s small navy did its best to repulse ...
Eighteen months ago, I interviewed President Mohamed Nasheed, the Maldives first ever democratically elected leader, for al Jazeera TV in the capital, Male. Then, as now, this small Indian Ocean island nation, stood on the edge of a constitutional crisis. “I could do what the old dictator, Gayoom ...
Bernard Savage, Head of the EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said: “At this stage, given our information, we would not say that there has been any legal infringement of constitutional forms. We are not taking sides but, as the High Representative Cathy Ashton has made clear, what we ...
In all of the hyperbole surrounding Newt Gingrich's storming victory over Mitt Romney in South Carolina, little or no attention has so far been given to the slippery amphibian that bares the same name as the far Right Republican President wannabee. Readers may therefore be somewhat ...
The dramatic decision by the Maldives Government to close down tourist hotel health spas – following recent noisy protests that claimed they were ‘un Islamic’ - provoked fairly predictable headlines in some of the Western media. Best was the tongue in cheek concern in the London Evening Standard ...
It was an innocuous enough statement. The fact that it referred to an event that had occurred while much of the World – and particularly the Western media – was on holiday, explains why it received such little coverage. But then good news, especially if it is associated with the United Nations ...
News of the demise of Kim Jong Il, leader of the ‘hermit kingdom’, or the World’s last Stalinist State, North Korea, shouldn’t have come as a surprise; after all, he had been quite ill for some time. But his death comes at a highly inconvenient and potentially dangerous time, with his son and heir ...
A former British Prime Minister, James Callaghan, once warned that sudden squalls could blow into major storms and often from unexpected places. Not very long afterwards, the Argentinians began to make bellicose noises towards the British ruled Falkland Islands, which they claimed as the Islas ...