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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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Form follows social function
Athletes, workout enthusiasts, and everyone who has suffered from the embarrassing armpit "situation", rejoice. Bioengineers at University of California, Davis have developed a new fabric that works like human skin, forming excess sweat into droplets that drain away by themselves. The team ...
You only know how hard it is to be a responsible consumer after you've tried it - running laps around isles trying to find that one brand you know is free-trade, reading labels to avoid carcinogenic ingredients, or looking for the organic produce sticker (5 digit code starting with 9 means organic ...
Check out “the fairest system for payment of carriage or anything by air”. According to Samoa Air, they are the first airline in the world which charges you by the pound and provides a better level of comfort, customized to your needs. The system is super simple - the price of the ticket is ...
There’s been a pretty cool design piece circulating the tumblrsphere in the past few days. It’s called The Window Socket and is designed by Kyuho Song and Boa Oh. It’s a solar powered portable plug socket, which allows you to plug in any of your devices into a sun-lit window of a house, car, plane ...
If the current growth rate continues, the global demand for petroleum will double in the next 40-50 years. According to the IEA we will need to introduce more than 30% zero-carbon fuels to stabilize CO2 levels at 450 parts per million. New Zealand’s company LanzaTech is going to be part of the ...
There’s hardly ever been a Bulgarian kid growing up in the 80s, including myself, who doesn’t remember their baba (granny), sitting on the couch, knitting yet another sweater. For some it may have been the horrible piece of clothing they can’t sneak out from wearing and for others a rare chance to ...
It started with the thought of crowdfunding the U.S. national debt (for me at least that’s how it started - by stumbling upon this witty marketing campaign and an April Fools' Day joke - http://www.crowdfundthedebt.com/). I mean, could we really? Why not? When it comes to crowdfunding, I’ve ...
I love smart design, when you can just look at a product or service and be able to see the methodical, thorough, detail-oriented thinking process that went behind it, aimed at solving a problem, innovating, and disregarding convention. The invisible bike helmet from the Swedish company Hövding (don ...
If you believe that the nonprofit sector has a serious role to play in changing the world, then you’ve got to see this TED talk, given by Dan Palotta, AIDSRide founder and author of Charity Case . Why? Because according to him, it is the way we think about nonprofits that undermines our very own ...
Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, in a speech at an MIT symposium, Tim Berners-Lee said that "access to the web is now a human right". Probably not many people know, however, that only 25.6% of the world population has internet access. This means there are 5 billion people worldwide ...
In a previous post, Teddy Zareva wrote about a biodegradable urn made by the Spanish designer Martin Azua that turns you into a tree when you die. Big Think readers quickly warmed to this romantic notion of life after death in the form of "an eco solution," and the post went viral. One big ...
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after military service went by many names before it was recognized as a legitimate condition. “Shell shock,” “combat fatigue” and “soldier’s heart” are among the more recent terms for the haunting anxiety problems that some military personnel endure after ...
Here are three interesting items that make the process of packing, eating and separating trash a bit more practical, fun, and smart. I love the idea behind the packaging of one of the world's most expensive olive oils, El Verd Del Poaig. It's design was done by Spanish studio CuldeSac and it's ...
Nature doesn't litter, people do. In the US that trash amounts to 1.4 billion pounds per day. And 40% of that is packaging. Recently, Greenpeace tried to provoke the global community portraying Barbie as a serial killer because of her addiction to cheap packaging. I personally think that ...
1.3 trillion bricks are manufactured each year worldwide. 10% of them are made by hand in coal-fired ovens, emitting on average 1.4 pounds of carbon per brick or 800 million tons of carbon per year. In countries like China and India where the kilns are outdated this process is one of the major ...