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.
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Videos from Big Think experts
The knowledge economy is about producing ideas, not goods, the story goes. And manufacturing, the kind of work that involves producing physical goods, does not involve knowledge. This is a false dichotomy, says Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih. We have a misconception that making ...
If you are an infrared camera with a facial recognition system, this is your worst nightmare. Researchers at Japan's National Institute of Informatics have developed goggles that jam facial recognition systems with a burst of light that is invisible to the human eye. Watch here: (h/t Fast ...
At first glance, Tito Beveridge, the charismatic founder of Tito's Handmade Vodka, appears to be an unlikely success story, possibly even a complete fluke. In the video below, Beveridge tells Big Think he didn't set out to build a big nationwide vodka company. He just set out "to meet some ...
An electric bicycle took off in a Prague exhibition hall yesterday and completed a 5 minute flight and safe landing. The bike was operated from the ground by remote control. The rider on this bike is a dummy. Watch here:
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory released a video that captured multiple 'sun tornadoes,' or plasma moving across the sun’s surface. This type of violent space weather has the potential to create major problems for human activities, for instance, by damaging communication satellites. Watch ...
Sure, it's a gimmick, but like any really good gimmick, this caught our attention, and is worth sharing. The sushi restaurant chain YO!Sushi has introduced a flying drone server at its flagship restaurant in London. According to Yo!Sushi's YouTube channel, the gadget, called the "iTray," is made ...
"Each language is in many ways an expression of how one society or culture thinks," says hyper-polyglot Tim Doner. "I feel that when I start to speak foreign languages, a lot of times I become a bit of a different person. Perhaps I say things that I wouldn't necessarily say in English." Doner ...
Researchers at the University of Minnesota have created a brain-computer interface that allows a person to guide a flying robot with their thoughts. Watch here: Read more in the Journal of Neural Engineering: http://iopscience.iop.org/1741-2552/1...
"Good prose is like a windowpane," wrote George Orwell when he was evaluating his own body of work in 1946. When he had lacked a strong motive, Orwell observed, he produced "lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally ...
In about 15 years we'll be able to indefinitely extend life, says futurist Ray Kurzweil in a special appearance in the electro House musician Steve Aoki's new video "Singularity." The video below is yet another indication that Kurzweil's ideas have been accepted into mainstream culture, and ...
When the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin was asked to join a research group to work on economics his first response was "I don't know anything about economics." That's okay, said Mike Brown, the former CFO of Microsoft, "because nobody does and the whole system is about to collapse." That was ...
Using raw images from NASA's website, space nerd Karl Sanford constructed this short time-lapse video that features highlights of the Curiosity Rover's visit to Mars. Watch here: dagsdds
YouTube user styropyro, aka, The DIY Laser Guy, aka, the Southern Illinois University chemistry student Drake Anthony, has always been "obsessed with light and fire." And now he has made a DIY lightsaber that can burn through a variety of objects. Watch here: You can see more of styropyro ...
How good are you at your job? How successful are you in your personal life? To answer those questions, being human, you look at others to evaluate yourself. It is a natural and obvious choice to compare yourself to your peers, friends and colleagues, but it is a choice that can seriously impact ...
All across the Internet, we see little memes popping up, and then petering out. A savvy Internet user might be able to use her intuition to spot the memes that have staying power, but identifying these memes in isolation, while perhaps interesting, is not very useful. "What makes it useful and ...