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.
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Big ideas in little doses
What's the Big Idea? Computer storage and software are already migrating to the cloud, and soon processing power will go virtual as well, making our mobile devices as powerful as supercomputers. What's the Breakthrough? Much of your computing already takes place on the cloud, and you ...
"We're faced with puzzles every day in life," says Will Shortz. He should know—he's the only person to hold a degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles. He's also been The New York Times's Crossword Editor for almost 20 years. "With a crossword or Sudoku or any other kind of human-made ...
You are looking at the first color image of Mercury from orbit. Why is this significant? NASA's Mercury Messenger spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury on March 17, becoming the first spacecraft to ever do so. While orbiting Mercury, Messenger's instruments have undertaken the first ...
Big Think spoke to The New York Times chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, about the present and future state of journalism and online criticism. Big Think: Generally speaking, what do think the state of journalism is right now? Ben Brantley: Journalism is frontier land right now. I don’t ...
What's the Big Idea? The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore's Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate. Why Is It Groundbreaking? For the vast majority of human existence, it was safe ...
"Ageism exists in this country," says TheLadders.com founder Mark Cenedella. "It’s absolutely clear, you’re not going to change it, and you’re not going to change people’s perceptions." That's the bad news. But the good news is there are ways that you can overcome this bias, says Cenedella, who ...
What's the Big Idea? Solar power, driven by exponentially-increasing nanotechnology, will satisfy the entire world's need for energy in less than twenty years. Why Is It Groundbreaking? Currently, solar power supplies less than 1% of the world's energy needs, which has led many to ...
This Big Idea was suggested by Big Think Delphi Fellow Carl Zimmer. What’s the Big Idea? The 98% of the human genome that was once considered to be useless “junk” actually plays a vital role in making us unique. Why Is It Groundbreaking? DNA works by transcribing its genetic code of A’s ...
The life of Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a self-described oddity, may appear to be somewhat of an enigma. Rev. Gomes, widely considered one of the country's leading preachers, died Monday at 68. Gomes was a gay black Baptist preacher and a registered Republican (he became a Democrat in 2006 and ...
It's been a difficult week for governments--both dictatorships and democracies alike--to keep their ambassadors in line. Libya's Ambassador to the U.S., Ali Ojli, urged international action to stop the violence in Libya: Meanwhile, a separate international incident centered around the U.S ...
Pearl Square in Bahrain's capital Manama is the setting for the latest round of clashes between autocratic Arab leaders and protestors emboldened by other successful Arab revolts. But unlike the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, which were largely secular, the tenor of the debate in Bahrain is ...
Advances in biotechnology have made the genetic enhancement of unborn children more and more feasible, raising exciting prospects along with thorny moral dilemmas. Does such enhancement represent a profound challenge to our common humanity, on par with the eugenics movement of the early 20th ...
In his 15 years as a staff writer for the New Yorker, bestselling-author Malcolm Gladwell has profiled a host of what he calls "minor geniuses"—innovators or pioneers usually from a niche field or discipline. In talking with dozens of these trailblazers, Gladwell tells Big Think that he noticed ...
The New York Times offered up a primer on the four-decade battle royal between the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation schools. The occasion, of course, was the impending face-off between IBM's Watson Computing System and the human Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutte. The ...
The rise of the machines is upon us—the rise of machine-to-machine connectivity, that is. The next stage of the Internet's development is the "Web of Things." Simply put, this means that the normal, everyday things—appliances, buildings, cars—will be hooked into the web and able to transmit and ...