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.
Insights from the classics applied to contemporary moral and philosophical questions.
Men and women of the American armed forces are on patrol today in the ancient cities of Kabul, Herat, and throughout Afghanistan. Our soldiers come in the footsteps of so many other armies: the Immortals of the Persian King Cyrus, the Macedonian Phalanx of Alexander the Great, the armies of ...
September 21, 2010 marked the 2501th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. Of course, probably every day somewhere in the world people commemorate Marathon by running a 26 mile Marathon race. I wonder how many of them know or care that they are paying tribute to men who fought for freedom so ...
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So George Santayana, Harvard intellectual, whose main contribution to history was to write books no one reads any more. “History is bunk.” So Henry Ford, high school drop-out, whose inventive genius transformed history. Both ...
What’s the Big Idea? In a 2010 Big Think interview, technology writer Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains) argued that the Web has made its users proficient at searching and browsing, but lousy at reading and remembering. The distraction-filled online world, he ...
Plato’s vision of a harmonious state would scandalize liberals and conservatives alike. But some of his advice might be worth taking. What’s the Big Idea? Although it’s a staple of philosophy classes everywhere, Plato’s Republic has attracted considerable criticism over the centuries. As a ...
What’s the Big Idea? Whether or not they consider themselves politically “progressive,” many Americans reflexively expect their country to make robust progress along economic lines. Buoyed by decades of material growth, we expect GDP to rise and standards of living to improve indefinitely. If ...