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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Why our fears don’t match the facts
If you look east from most places in Seattle, you can see majestic Mt. Rainier looming tall and snow covered 80 miles to the west. Mt. Rainier is not just one of America’s most magnificent mountains. The U.S. Geological Survey says it is one of American’s most dangerous volcanoes, and ...
Seven years ago, FEMA was a four letter word. Public faith in the Federal Emergency Management Agency was decimated by the agency's poor response to Hurricane Katrina. President Bush praised FEMA Director Michael Brown four days into the storm - “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie ...
Different audiences will try to answer the question “Did climate change cause Superstorm Sandy?” in significantly different ways. I am thinking of two; the ‘thought’ community of scientists and policy makers and academics and ‘public intellectuals’/commenters, etc., who are ostensibly sorting this ...
A couple years ago, the government of New York City created a program on resilience to climate change and sea level rise. Many of the steps that program laid out are being put into action right now…evacuations…protection of critical infrastructure…preparations for repairing equipment and ...
California voters will be asked in November whether the state should require labels to inform consumers that their food contains genetically modified ingredients. Supporters base their case on scientific evidence they claim indicates various harms from GM food. Opponents say the proposition is ...
A court in Italy has convicted six scientists and one civil defense official of manslaughter in connection with their predictions about an earthquake in l’Aquila in 2009 that killed 309 people. But, contrary to the majority of the news coverage this decision is getting and the gnashing of ...
Dear England, The British press has had its knickers in a twist over Americans appropriating Britishisms for some time, whingeing about it in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Beeb, and even that font of high British cultural observation, The Sun, which noted the phenomenon in its own ...
People who think a risk will actually affect them and their families and communities, as opposed to somebody else, worry about that risk more. People who think a risk is happening now, as opposed to the same risk if it won’t happen until later, worry about that risk more. “Could It Happen to ME ...
To: POTUS Re: DEBATE Suggested remarks regarding your performance in the first debate. Mr. President, Don’t forget that, like any choice people make, elections aren’t really about the facts as much as they are about the feelings. The meters that will track people’s moment-by ...
DID YOU WATCH! Did your heart pound, your palms get sweaty, your muscles tense! Did you join the millions around the world gripped by fear and tension as Felix Baumgartner rose to more than 24 miles in a balloon-lifted capsule, opened the door (OH MY GOD!) stood out on the bar outside ...
A new study regarding a high-profile risk…mercury…has two important findings; there may be an association between in-utero mercury exposure and ADHD as kids grow up, but the children of pregnant mothers who ate more fish generally had better overall cognitive health. Beyond those ...
John Silber just passed away. He accomplished many things…made Boston University into an internationally recognized academic institution, served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education…but he also taught an important lesson about the real importance of televised political ...
“When I was young and bold and strong, O, right was right and wrong was wrong! My plume on high, my flag unfurled, I rode away to right the world. Come out you dogs and fight! said I, And wept there was but once to die.” Dorothy Parker’s wonderful poem about the ...
It is frightening to observe how persistently people reject evidence that presents some truth inconvenient to their deeper beliefs and self identities; excessive fear of vaccines, or fluoride, or nuclear power…denial of climate change, evolution, the age of the earth! Stunning. Some scientists ...
A huge research project about DNA (ENCODE) has provoked more scientific controversy over just what proportion of that huge molecule plays an active role in making us us. When DNA research first began decades ago, it was thought that only a couple percent of all those millions of pairs ...