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.
We used to live in a world where content producers chose the channels of distribution. Now the consumers choose.* That means the producer has to deliver the message over many channels, optimized for each. For those who hate long videos, you make short ones and post them where they visit online ...
Guest post from Cole Haymond. Coming off an election year, we were able to bear witness to one of the most effective, efficient and successful online campaigns in our nation's history with the reelection of President Obama. From early 2011 to the 2012 elections, I had the pleasure of consulting ...
Telephone polls have been in their dying throes for years. At about 12% response rates, they shouldn't even work now. But they do, so far. That said, pollsters expect them to die at any moment. I preparation for the demise of telephone polls, pollsters have been looking for alternative sampling ...
Facebook stocks are tanking, for now. Its membership growth is outstripping its revenue growth. And they keep changing the damned interface. What's a social network organizer to do? Watching the Facebook IPO drama unfold has been fascinating. I haven't written about it yet, but I have talked ...
Since Herman Cain dropped out of the presidential race, Mitt Romney has added 500,000 Facebook fans. This brings him to a total of 1,644,358 page likes, most from his 2008 presidential campaign. Meanwhile, Barack Obama has 26,138,136 page likes. What does this mean for the campaigns? The key ...
Advocacy groups, political campaigns, and news media are all trying to sort out the most effective way to use Twitter. Among the questions being wrestled are: Should we follow everyone who follows us? Should we engage in conversation with our audience? Should our staff be allowed to tweet about ...
Guest post from Beth Becker... Social media has always been a fast moving field. What’s new and exciting one day quickly gets tossed aside for the next shiny new toy. Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what I think are some of the trends not just for the next month or two but ...
When Facebook allowed page administrators to interact on Facebook as the page, I was elated. But I am increasingly finding that other changes in Facebook are making it much less appealing for advocacy and organizing. Leaving aside recent reports indicating that only about 10% of your friends ...
I have assembled a catalogue of 85 tools to help you run a more effective social media program for your campaign, organization, or business. Most of these are free. A lot are for Twitter. Many help you leverage Facebook and other social media too. Some help you find the best content to share via ...
Kyle Stoneman of OwlBee.com put it best when he said, "We used to live in a world where the producers of content determined the channels of distribution. We now live in a world where the consumers of content determine the channels of distribution." I found this observation extremely profound. As ...
--- By Victoria Bassetti, David Norton and Alan Rosenblatt Now that Mitt Romney can claim two wins in the Republican primaries/caucuses, where do his rivals go? We know physically: South Carolina and Florida. (And seriously who wouldn’t want to be there in January?) But for Rick Santorum ...
Who owns the Twitter followers you accumulate while working for an employer? This is the question under consideration in new lawsuit filed by Phonedog.com against former employee Noah Kravitz. Whether the courts will rule correctly on this question remains to be seen. But in my mind, with rare ...
Never before has the poor been so well-armed. Not with guns, but with the weapons of the digital age. In civil societies, where democracies prevail, political succession and policy-making is conducted at the end of a pen, not a sword. Well, maybe not so much a pen anymore, but certainly by some ...
Candidates recognize the importance of creating videos for YouTube. A good video can go a long way towards marketing the campaign and building name recognition. But with this amazing opportunity comes risk. Of course we all know about the risk engendered by Senator George Allen when he went on his ...
{EAV:e47b9f8ac33e6b9b}Last summer I was invited to President Obama's Twitter Townhall at the White House along with 139 other characters. Despite the grandiose setting and President Obama opening the event with a tweet (pictured here), I was thoroughly disappointed. Why? Because it wasn't really a ...