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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The big ideas behind a unique event experience on Nantucket.
It was like a "literacy-palooza" with kids "stage-diving for books." That was the scene that John Wood describes as his "game-over moment," or the moment he decided to quit Microsoft and pursue his non-profit organization, Room to Read, full-time. Wood had gone on a hiking trip in Nepal and ...
While the media may have reported the failure of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) as the result of high-level interventions from Silicon Valley big shots, that was not the case. So argues Elizabeth Stark, who was on the front lines of the battle for a free and open ...
What's the Big Idea? Full citizenship is the idea in which all members of society see themselves as change agents. Instead of relying on power users -- people who regularly vote and attend meetings -- full citizenship can harness the collective intelligence of the entire population. So if that's ...
"Mine is on. I'm a lion!" A boy living in a remote village in Ethiopia said this in his native language after he figured out how to turn on a tablet. Eight months later he was writing the word "LION" in English on a drawing app. Here's the extraordinary part: no one taught him how to do that. He ...
There is a widely perceived "hiccup" in the American story today. While we once saw ourselves as "exceptional," is America now out of gas? This is the question Tom Ashbrook raised to a panel at The Nantucket Project, a festival of ideas on Nantucket, Massachusetts. Ashbrook tapped the ...
Vulcans, the extraterrestrial species in Star Trek, are capable of transferring knowledge to other species, including humans, through physical contact. Fortunately for humans, the Vulcans have a great deal to offer, such as how to eliminate poverty and disease. While this so-called "mind meld ...
The original Mechanical Turk -- a fake chess playing machine -- is one of the more notorious hoaxes in history in that it fooled a lot of smart people for a long period of time. Designed to impress a Habsburg Empress, the "machine" beat many famous human opponents in chess, including Napoleon and ...
Will increased connectivity create more good or more evil in the future? Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of the tech giant with the famous founding motto of "Don't be evil," is naturally concerned with this question. Schmidt has recently teamed up with Google Ideas director Jared Cohen to co ...
"It would be hard to imagine the President of the United States declaring war on Alzheimers," Peter Thiel says, "because our pessimism about technology has started to seep into the system." That's right, we are pessimists whether we want to admit it or not, and it can be seen in our diminished ...
John Kerry is a name that appears on a number of short lists right now to fill positions in the second Obama administration. He could be Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. The only thing that is hurting his chances for either post is the possibility that Scott Brown -- the Republican ...
"All men will become brothers under thy gentle wing." Thus sings the chorus in the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which serves as the anthem of the European Union. That phrase rings rather hollow these days as Spaniards suffering through 25 percent unemployment burn effigies of ...
What's the Big Idea? Here's the $720 billion question: who will blink first -- President Obama or Congressional Republicans -- when it comes to negotiating a plan to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," the series of tax hikes and spending cuts that are set to go into effect at the end of the ...
What's the Big Idea? If you are not planning to vote in the upcoming election, Larry Lessig has a good explanation why. You, like most Americans, believe that money buys results in Congress. No matter who wins, you believe that corporate interests will still have too much power and prevent ...
What’s the Big Idea? 21st century problems create strange bedfellows. Actor Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk, Shutter Island, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) was minding his own career and family when a series of coincidences led to his becoming a passionate activist for renewable energy. At this ...
What's the Big Idea? The British scientist and author Matt Ridley makes an apt comparison between the spread of knowledge and sexual reproduction. Ideas are not birthed by single parents. The accumulation of knowledge over the course of many generations is in their DNA. That is why Ridley sees ...