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.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
Form follows social function
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks”, says Jeff Hammerbacher, the researcher who laid the foundation for facebook’s precision advertising model. A similar sentiment is found in the 2001 artwork “Designers, stay away from corporations that ...
900 million people worldwide live without safe drinking water according to WHO and UNICEF. In most of these areas it is the women and the kids who have to walk for miles each day carrying heavy jugs and missing school and work opportunities. One of the solutions to this problem could be fog ...
How about a lamp that provides you with free and environmentally friendly energy.. forever! All you have to do is water it. Literally. Soil Lamp is an invention of the Dutch designer Marieke Staps and it consists of an LED bulb planted in.. mud. The mud is enclosed in cells which contain zinc ...
In a country referred to as “the worst place to be a child”, for five years now, Abraham “Abramz” Tekya has been using hip hop and breakdance to empower, rehabilitate, and heal his community. Abramz is the founder and director of Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU), a non-profit organization that ...
One of my favorite scenes from Objectified is the IDEO toothbrush brainstorm. It never struck me before how hard it would be to redesign a product that has become so universal. Which is why I love “THIS” – an organic biodegradable alternative to the toothbrush. The story of THIS starts in ...
It is important to know when things work. Especially because the media bias feeds us a disproportionate amount of negatively slanted news. It is also important to know that what you do and how you design your everyday environment makes a difference, even if it’s just a sticker on your car ...
It’s not easy for most urban dwellers to get their daily dose of nature moving from one concrete box to another. Habitat Horticulture tries to solve this problem by painting walls with plants. The company designs living walls that optimize everyday space, transform it aesthetically, and in addition ...
It may be a bit weird to use the word 'elegant' to describe something with the name “Peepoo” but that’s exactly what it is – an absolutely brilliant and elegant solution to one of the greatest global problems – clean sanitation. 2.6 billion people worldwide lack access to toilets – one of the ...
Did you know that within six hours the world's deserts receive more energy than humankind consumes within a year? How awesome would it be to be able to tap into all that potential, clean energy? The DESERTEC foundation – a European non-profit organization - hopes to do exactly that. ...
A great deal has been said and published lately on changing educational paradigms. In fact, this conversation isn't a recent development – even in the 1980s, iconic science fiction author Isaac Asimov was pushing for reinjecting creativity into school curricula in order to fix a broken and ...
Remember Scott Bursaw's ingenious solar roadways prototype? Now, the small town of Krommenie in Northern Holland is planning to pilot a similar concept on cycling paths. Developed by Dutch innovation consultancy TNO, Sola Road consists of concrete panels with embedded thick crystalline silicon ...
During the Vietnam War, the US dropped an average one B-52 bomb load every 8 minutes, 24/7, for a total of 2 million tons of ordnance, making Laos the most heavily bombed country in the world. peaceBOMB is an inspired project aiming to "buy back the bombs" and deploy them in the pursuit of ...
Spacehacking is a common craft among urban dwellers who want to make the most out of their less-than-generous floor plans. From Japanese-born, German-based designer Yuya Ushida comes Sofa_XXXX – an ingenious chair that expands into a 3-person couch. Meticulously engineered and made of 8,000 custom ...
Two of today's hottest areas of design innovation – data visualization and materials science – converge in a new project by NYU students Sue Ngo and Nien Lam. Warning Signs are garments outfitted with carbon monoxide sensors that make blue veins appear on lung- and heart-shaped thermochromic fabric ...
Wind power is one of the most sustainable, efficient sources of alternative energy. Its predominant vehicle, however, isn't without flaws – wind turbines contribute to noise pollution, pose a danger to birds and other species of the skies, displace land from other uses, and are virtually impossible ...