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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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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What's the Big Idea? Maddie Grant is a social media consultant at SocialFish, and has observed that companies that have trouble integrating social media tend to have deeper organizational issues. For instance, let's say your company doesn't collaborate. That's a problem with the company ...
What's the Big Idea? Have a latte with any Silicon Valley or Alley entrepreneur and you’ll be hit full force with this species’ zealous, Adam Smith–like faith in the “invisible hand” of technology. Tech itself, so goes the logic, will solve our human problems by making us exponentially more ...
What's the Big Idea? Recently a well-known European airline lost my suitcase. After five days of leaving messages on the straight-to-voicemail customer service line and waiting in vain for an update, I started tweeting about it. Within one day I got this response: “We're sorry for the ...
What's the Big Idea? What is the meaning of the viral cat phenomenon? When future historians attempt to decode this moment in history, what will they make of this? If their verdict is that we were all a pack of drooling idiots, they’ll be missing the point. According to John Seely Brown, a ...
What’s the Big Idea? We may not yet possess those cool transparent computers they have on CSI, but we live in a science fiction fantasy world of seamless information exchange, one in which even our telephones seem to possess magical powers. The less you know about technology, the more magical it ...
What’s the Big Idea? Dreadlocked virtual reality/motion-sensor technology pioneer, octopus enthusiast, and master of a wide array of rare indigenous musical instruments Jaron Lanier is concerned about conformity. Lanier has been more intimately involved than most, since the very beginning, in ...
What's the Big Idea? Vijay Vaitheeswaran surveys the landscape of the global economy and sees "wicked problems," to borrow a phrase from the subtitle of his bestselling new book, Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness and ...
What is the Big Idea? The futuristic-looking Edison 2 is a vehicle built by a team of race car drivers, designers and engineers that boasts incredible fuel efficiency and featherweight dimensions. It was also the winner of the Progressive Automotive X Prize in 2010, a contest designed to push ...
What's the Big Idea? For corporations, growth is a quarterly concern -- a hope maybe, but not a necessity. For small businesses and nonprofits, stagnation isn't an option: it's grow or die. But as businesses transition from startup to established company, the bootstrapped mentality is hard to ...
What's the Big Idea? Imagine if you could live your life the way you watch a movie on a DVR. You could fast-forward through all the tedious moments and skip right to the good stuff. That was the premise of the 2006 sci-fi comedy Click, starring Adam Sandler. However, as Sandler's character ...
Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab, followed a very unorthodox career path. He dropped out of college but became a lifelong learner and a highly successful venture capitalist. At the MIT Media Lab, Ito has championed that institution's inter-disciplinary approach to problem-solving. That ...
What's the Big Idea? Most academics work alongside other academics in the same field to arrive at the deepest possible understanding of a particular subject. At the MIT Media Lab, researchers focus on breadth, not depth, of knowledge. On any given day, you could come across an engineer, an ...