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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Fallout and fanfare from the media revolution
“The only constant is change, continuing change, inevitable change: that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.” Isaac Asimov said that, and while Novel Copy never ...
I noted the moment when sales of Amazon’s Kindle outpaced the site’s hardcover sales. Now, only a short time later, two new significant events signal the end of book publishing as we know it. One is the increasing popularity of the Kindle, which for a time lingered in new-technology obscurity. Tech ...
The specter of $10 is lurking in the corners of the startup industry. The figure is common to two aspects of the website business. As I wrote about earlier, blog hosting sites like The Faster Times, The Awl and the late True/Slant pay their bloggers about $10 for each post—some sites pay less ...
Building on yesterday’s post, today I examine some more implications of the claim made by The Times of London that it found the names of Afghan informants in the secret war logs released by WikiLeaks. In particular, what is the veracity of The Times’ claims? And what about the moral culpability of ...
Today and tomorrow I’ll hopefully make peace with my curiosity about WikiLeaks and the accusation that it disclosed the names and locations of Afghan informants serving the U.S. and coalition forces. Evidence supporting the accusation has been scant while the accusation itself has been repeated so ...
Front-lighting technology similar to Amazon’s Kindle will eventually be standard on computers and up-coming e-devices, meaning the computer display currently burning holes in your eyes won't last forever. The problem now is one of either/or. Users must choose between the comfort of reading on a ...
Google, whose genius was born in the search engine, is now looking at itself from beyond the grave. CEO Erich Schmidt is preparing his company for the next round of development in Web-based technology, which includes, he says, a step away from the famed Google search toward a semantic Web. In this ...
That’s right. It’s happening. Print is being phased out and new digital platforms, which will require subscriptions to read, are being phased in. Today, a news corporation, a journalist and news enthusiast, and the Academy each give their take on the future of the newspaper as it moves to digital ...
Following up on Monday’s post about WikiLeaks, today I address the moral correctness of the organization. There is no evidence that WikiLeaks disclosed the names of Afghan informants; there is inductive evidence that suggests they didn't. WikiLeaks clearly acted in violation of U.S. law, law ...
Here is the uncomfortable truth for those, like me, who oppose Google and Verizon’s policy suggestion to the FCC concerning net neutrality: money talks and money walks. Investment and innovation in wireless networks, which are unquestionably the future of the Web, will accelerate if companies can ...
Now that the dust has settled after the immediate reaction to WikiLeak’s release of secret Afghan war logs, clearer lines can be drawn concerning the event’s significance. The most fundamental distinction to be drawn is between the technical and moral implications of the leak. Today I will look at ...
In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Random House CEO Markus Dohle explained his company’s outlook on the future, why he’s in no rush to bargain with Apple, and what publishers must do to avoid the fate of the music industry. Throughout, Dohle expresses confidence that Random House, along with ...
True/Slant and The Big Money will both close their doors this weekend, though one has a decidedly brighter future than the other. T/S will continue in some form under its new owner, Forbes Media, though details of what the new project will look like remain scant. The Big Money, however, will fold ...
Eliminate the middle-man. This classic piece of business advice recently received an unusual interpretation: the literary agent, commonly seen as the middle-man between author and publishing house, is circumventing the publishing house! The Guardian has reported on star literary agent Andrew ...
The newspapers of yore had two dependable revenue streams: subscribers and advertisers. Today’s broadsheets draw money from the same sources, but funding problems at even the most mainstream papers are commonplace. Murdoch and his News Corporation, ever the industry leader, have a plan to put ...