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.
News of our latest interviews with experts
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Earlier today, Big Think reader Tricia Adams forwarded us an article highlighting "33 Interesting and Inspiring Academics Worth Following on Twitter," which she thought might be of interest to you, our readers. You can check out the list, which includes numerous former Big Think guests, here. Big ...
Legendary oilman and billionaire entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens will visit Big Think's studios next week. Submit your questions for the tycoon in the comment section below. Our editorial team will select the best of your energy and investment-related inquiries to ask during Mr. Pickens first Big ...
As we enter a new era of online education it is crucial to determine what types of tools engage students in this environment. More specifically, what is the most effective way to teach short, actionable business lessons online? What sources of insight do people trust most? Big Think posed a ...
"Should Virtual Suicide Be Outlawed?" "Hacking the Human Heart" These two provocative headlines are from recent posts by Marc Goodman, the author of Future Crimes, a new blog on Big Think. Goodman is a global thinker, writer and consultant focused on the disruptive impact of advancing ...
No one knows more about life's ethical dilemmas than Randy Cohen. After spending over a decade answering readers' questions for the New York Times Magazine column The Ethicist , Cohen has fielded thousands of queries regarding everything from whether it's O.K. to move to higher-priced unoccupied ...
Today, Big Think launches StandOut, a video-driven career curriculum for university-educated job-seekers. StandOut video segments feature actionable career insights from today’s most influential leaders and experts, as they share their knowledge on topics ranging from résumés to risk-taking. The ...
Are people naturally good or evil? How much of our mental life is unconscious? Are our desires hard-wired by evolution? On the evening of Monday, March 21st, renowned psychologist and Yale University professor Paul Bloom will explore the big ideas in psychology through three case studies that ...
On Friday, February 25, Big Think will be interviewing Ray Kurzweil, the futurist visionary, inventor, entrepreneur and modern-day Nostradamus, who predicted with uncanny accuracy the rise of the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the year that a computer would beat a human being at chess ...
In a panel near the end of Farsight 2011, several search luminaries spoke about how the sheer quantity of information around us is affecting the way we think — and even how our brains are developing. UCLA neuroscience professor Gary Small, who gave a presentation earlier in the day about how the ...
In a special presentation at Big Think's Farsight 2011, Ilya Segalovich, co-founder and CTO of Russian search engine Yandex spoke about why his company has been dominant in that country's search market, with a 60 percent share of queries. "We are a monopoly," he admitted. Yandex established its ...
Part five of Big Think's Farsight 2011 event looked at how artificial intelligence and machine learning would affect the future of digital search — and how we understand and predict the future. Luc Barthelet, the executive director of Wolfram/Alpha spoke about the technique behind his search ...
The fourth part of Big Think's Farsight 2011 event discussed what future search experiences might be like. People instinctively want to interact with technology in ways that feel natural to them, but this has never been possible until now, said Berkeley professor Marti Hearst. She forecasted ...
In part 3 of Big Think's Farsight 2011 event, Jaron Lanier discusses the trouble with un-monetized services on the web. Search's spam problem may be solved by attaching a small micro-payment to every one of our searches. "Is paid search comprising the value of search," asks Big Think emcee Vivek ...