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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Guest posts from thought leaders
Editor's Note: This article appeared on RealClearScience, and is paired with another that disagrees. Read that article here. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous 9-0 decision, determined that biotechnology companies are not allowed to patent genes. This is a step in the right direction, but ...
by Suzanne Ehlers, for Population Action International A walk to her local clinic may take several hours. She may have to wait in line. She may have to go back several times before she can get the method she needs. She may even get pushback from others in her family, in her neighborhood. But she ...
CEOs traditionally consider themselves to be larger-than-life figures: the superheroes of the C-suite. And with tomorrow’s release of Man of Steel, the latest movie to extol the legendary triumphs of Superman, this is a moment to examine how many chief executives misinterpret and mishandle what ...
This post originally appeared on the Newton blog on RealClearScience. You can read the original here. The building 29 cleanroom at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is a tinkerer's dream. There, in an assortment of expensive pieces, rests NASA's preeminent project of ...
This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller. You can read the original here. I do not come to praise Edward Snowden, but to pardon him — or at least, to suggest that President Barack Obama do so, if and when he is charged. Even if Snowden has committed crimes, he has done his country ...
“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” –Lee Greenwood Notwithstanding the earnest patriotism of Lee Greenwood’s anthem, “God Bless the USA,” something about that particular lyric has always rankled. There’s a passive-aggressive prickliness to that “at least” in ...
The ideas that change the world are often those that, in retrospect, are the most obvious. Upon understanding the central tenet of Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, Thomas Huxley famously responded, “How extremely stupid for me not to have thought of that!” International children’s ...
This article originally appeared in the Newton blog on RealClearScience. You can read the original here. Can you run faster when you chase someone? The intuitive answer, of course, is yes. But, if you carefully timed yourself under controlled conditions, would it hold true? A study conducted by ...
American public discourse, particularly on the Internet, includes a reliable population that is perpetually honked off, offended, and eager to unleash the awesome power of ALL CAPS against any idea, no matter how commonsensical. But for all the hullabaloo around the IRS of late, with ...
We have a problem with absentee owners. Remember several years ago when, under the Clinton Administration, there was pressure on absentee fathers to bear responsibility for caring for their children? We have the same problem with corporations. But in this case there are no parents at all. No ...
As Congressman Dave Camp has observed, the tax code of the United States is now ten times as long as the Bible, with none of the good news. It is also exponentially more difficult to comply with, as there have been some 5,000 revisions made in the last dozen years. Even ancient scriptures, while ...
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In this ongoing series, I talk with thought leaders about ideas in my book Nature's Fortune and trends in the environmental movement. Next in the series is my conversation with Matt Arnold, Managing Director and Head of the Office of Environmental Affairs, JPMorgan Chase. Mark Tercek: I ...
This article originally appeared in the Newton blog on RealClearScience. You can read the original here. The courtroom is hushed. A teenage boy has been slain, riddled with bullets during a drive-by shooting, and there, on the witness stand, is his crying mother. She's understandably weeping ...
Have you heard that money buys happiness? That's right, your parents lied to you again. In a recent global survey, researchers demonstrated that wealth is a key variable that can explain the disparity of happiness between countries. And we know that it's really true, because happiness research is ...
American consumers gained considerable knowledge and power when a huge Medicare database was recently distributed to the public in easy-to-understand language. The data revealed what many patients have long suspected – hospitals charge Medicare tremendously different prices for the same procedures ...