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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Envisioning the learning revolution
As you might have noticed from my posts here on Big Think already but certainly when you have read some of my other publications, I am an advocate for the revaluation of informal learning in our society. In my opinion it’s about time to rethink this importance of learning outside of our academic ...
One of the core features of computer games besides the graphics, sounds and story is something you don’t notice immediately. Some games do not do it very well but some became famous for it: Game Artificial Intelligence. From the humble beginnings in games like Pacman to the great successes we ...
With some training, good will and modern technology I think it is pretty safe to state that anyone of us can become really good at learning facts and therefore basically any topic. Flashcards are a great mean for this style of learning and start-ups in that sector are popping up like mushrooms ...
Yesterday I had a very pleasant talk with Tim Ridgway of Califone which once more showed how broad the transition period we are currently go through actually is. Califone develops teaching devices for schools and universities since 1947 and while the product range includes sophisticated headsets ...
Thanks to high speed Internet and flat rate pricing, virtual worlds saw a tremendous boost over the past years. This is unsurprisingly true for online games like World of Warcraft but also for virtual worlds like Second Life and Twinity which are now able to deliver more and more realistic graphics ...
Economic constraints play an increasingly bigger role in the decision which programs to offer on campus and which not. That often leads to cuts in language, arts and other less popular subjects whereas MBA studies are ramped up due to increasing demand. There is an interesting article about the ...
Two of my last posts were about video calls and augmented reality and a possible usage scenario of those technologies in education. Now, what would happen if we combined those two powerful technologies. Video calls are a great new way to connect with people already today. It works very well for ...
The first time I came across this new phenomenon was in my interview with Jeff Evans, one of the co-founders of MindSnacks back in August 2010. When I asked him what his own and the other founders’ motivation to develop a Spanish learning app for the iPhone was, he answered that they were ...
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and thus making video calls via services like Skype or Google Talk are already a well established standard in the tech community. According to a variety of reports it now looks as if video calls make their way into the mainstream. The iPhone 4 and Facetime give ...
Today we are all creating data and do it all the time, with every swipe of a credit card, click of a mouse button or finger tip on a touch screen. With the rise of mobile devices a whole new data set, Geolocation, got into this immense pool of information, yet we, the creators of information are ...
When was the last time you asked family and friends a question like “Do you know when King xyz ruled over England?” and if you did, how often did you get the answer “Why don’t you just google it?” or “Wikipedia is your friend!” or they may have pointed you to the useful site www.lmgtfy.com ...
This might at first sight sound like an oxymoron but it could be part of a future campus environment. Last year a couple of tech start-ups presented their first so called “telepresence robots” ready to be commercialized. The one that got the most attention from the tech scene is AnyBots ...
There is no doubt that Facebook is becoming the dominant social network on a global scale. More and more local players lose ground with their users switching to the US based alternative. I think the same will happen to business networks like the German Xing and the French Viadeo, which will sooner ...
Over the past decade, especially since 2007 when the first iPhone was launched, technology has become a centerpiece of our daily lives. Although still called smartphones, devices like the iPhone, the Droid or any other mobile phone in that range are actually mini computers that have more capacity ...
Language learning communities are the fastest growing part of education 2.0, with the three biggest services Babbel, Busuu and Livemocha having between one to eight million users and adding thousands of new users every day. As they are so popular amongst adults, it might be worth trying to ...