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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Responding to climate change and environmental degradation
The big news about yesterday’s extraordinary 350.org call for climate action, staged in more than 180 countries, was not that activists rallied in scuba gear underwater at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, or that soldiers in Afghanistan spelled out 350 with grain bags, or that Masai children sat in ...
Are you a writer with a green cause? Then you probably shouldn’t bother applying for Columbia University’s 2-year Earth & Environmental Science Journalism Master’s Degree (EESJ) this winter. It doesn’t exist anymore. After 14 years of turning out graduates who’ve gone on to write for Sports ...
What’s better than mimosas with brunch, walks in the park, dinner and a movie, day tripping out of town, reading a good book, and any other fabulous thing you could possibly think to do on a Saturday? Saving humanity from itself, that’s what. Saturday, October 24, has been dubbed International ...
Food purists, proponents of family farming and sustainable grub, Big Ag haters, pregnant ladies, and anyone else who gives a damn what they put in their mouth, sound the alarms. Tucked away at the tail end of a piece on climate change induced warfare in this week’s Economist is a specious and ...
As if we needed it: More evidence that Asia’s leaving the US in the dust when it comes to the renewable energies and green tech we’ll need to survive tomorrow’s warmer world. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported recently that of the 20 countries with the world’s largest ...
Something doesn’t match up here. Obama was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for integrating the American voice into the international climate conversation, yet the US is being blamed for holding the world back from reaching a climate change agreement. Two weeks of teeth-pulling climate ...
Cruise ships are, environmentally speaking, one of the very worst ways to travel. They suck up tons of energy both in and out of port, spew diesel particulate matter harmful to human health, and dump untreated or poorly treated sewage overboard into marine habitats. Yet Americans hop aboard in the ...
A blogstorm of concern is simmering in the booming netbook market, and it’s not about keyboard size or battery life. It’s about the potential health hazards of purportedly antimicrobial silver nano technology being sprayed on the keyboards of some of these uber portable laptops. Consumers are ...
You’ve heard the hullaballoo about recent legislative steps toward a carbon market. To which John Kerry responded last week, of his new climate bill, with a defensive: "I don't know what 'cap and trade' means. I don't think the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill, it's a ...
John Kerry and Barbara Boxer’s new Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is being trumpeted into the Senate this week. The act, stronger than the bill passed by the Congress in June (ACES), could create up to 1.9 million new jobs, make America energy independent, and combat climate change. Well ...
Can you hear me now? The Environmental Working Group (EWG) – a watchdog NGO run by an army of top scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers – released an alarming report this month on the serious risk your cell phone may pose to your health. According to EWG’s report ...
You already know that the world’s poor are being hit first and will suffer most as a result of climate change. Think Katrina, think flooding in Bangladesh, think desertification in Mali. What you may not know is that in many parts of the world women draw the shortest straw of all when it comes ...
Undecided as to whether Obama’s much-hyped address at yesterday’s UN climate change summit was groundbreaking or underwhelming? The reviews are rolling in – here’s what a few of the experts had to say. Surprisingly taken with the speech was Grist’s Jonathan Hiskes, who pointed out that while Obama ...
With just 70 days left before December’s critical international climate talks in Copenhagen (COP15), the heat is on to bring the world to an agreement on a plan for emissions reductions, climate change adaptation, and technology sharing between the developed and developing worlds. Science has ...
The friendly federal program you’ve come to know by its nickname, Cash for Clunkers, is officially defunct as of 8pm this past Monday, August 24th. Designed to get Hummers and SUVs off the road, as well as to jumpstart our failing auto industry, the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) program ...