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.
The co-evolution of humans and technology
Jason Silva, media personality, Singularity enthusiast and Fellow at the Hybrid Reality Institute, recently interview Barry Ptolemy who directed the documentary Transcendent Man . Check out this fun and informal interview with Barry, an incredibly thoughtful and talented director, on some of the ...
The Economist magazine’s recent turn towards more coverage of technology (including cover stories on cloud computing and DIY manufacturing) has been complemented by a provocative series of conferences under the label “Ideas Economy.” Last week in New York City, the Economist hosted a summit on “ ...
In his new book World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machine, and the Internet , Michael Chorost has a fascinating chapter called “The Most Intimate Interface” in which he argues that true intimacy would be far more profound if we were all connected to each other by the Internet ...
The cover of every single edition of TIME magazine (US, Europe, Asia, South Pacific) this week has the same title: “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal.” It is the most mainstream endorsement of the Singularity - the time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence - we’ve seen in ...
If you're not a gamer, it’s hard to imagine why 183 million Americans spend over 13 hours a week playing video games. It’s even harder to see why game designer Jane McGonigal would claim that games are the route to solving the world’s problems. Games instill some very good habits in people ...
GUEST POST BY LINA SRIVASTAVA "I felt if the Cairo museum is robbed, Egypt will never be able to get up again." -- Zahi Hawass. Egypt is in the midst of an uprising against 30 years of repressive rule and a flawed, corrupt governmental system, blocked avenues for political participation, and low ...
We don’t know about you, but we’re a little tired of conventional web searches. If you want to search anything (say Egypt), Google obediently proffers a number of sites starting with Wikipedia. The Wikipedia entry is usually a tad too detailed unless you’re writing a paper on the subject. Ideally ...
Sherry Turkle’s new book Alone Together is a dystopic treatise on the increasing presence of machines in our lives, both as mediums of constant connectivity and via interactive entities like robots. Turkle fears that we are underestimating the deep and complex implications of the rise of technology ...
The world's largest Massive Multi-Player Game isn't World of Warcraft, The Sims, or Happy Farm. In fact, it's not even online. It is the most ancient of arts: diplomacy. Diplomacy, as the saying goes, is the second oldest profession, and in the age of technology it has made a massive comeback ...
The world of parenting was presented with a gentle and nudging article in the New York Times last week on the importance of maintaining an imaginative and fun environment for children. The article captured the “growing movement to restore the sometimes-untidy business of play to the lives of ...
In a recent article, MSNBC called Facebook the divorce lawyer’s new best friend. Social media allows people to easily meet and flirt with attractive people, diverting attention and time away from significant others. The problem with this virtual bar is that it leaves a paper trail of status ...
GUEST POST WITH MANJULA KHANNA Our lives are techno-infused: the air is pregnant with possibility in an environment of constant connectivity and ever changing information. We use technology for almost every aspect of our lives: work (laptops, Google), relationships (Facebook, JDate ...
If you’re a frequent user of Amazon, you probably enjoy the ability to buy an item with just one click. Amazon has all your credit card information stored in its servers, and you can enjoy instant gratification for any item you choose on the site with the press of a button. You’ve enjoyed the exact ...
Nicolas Kristof recently wrote a column in the New York Times urging Americans to teach their children Spanish before Chinese. Chinese has become quite the coveted prize for New Yorkers: “Chinese classes have replaced violin classes as the latest in competitive parenting.” Over 80 schools in New ...
Mind, soul, personality: whatever you call it, most people agree that their memories, thoughts, and perceptions reside in the brain. Yet for all its importance, the brain has been notoriously difficult to understand. The mind’s elusiveness is not for lack of trying: neuroscientists have been ...