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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Reports of airplanes hitting birds and other wildlife have soared to more than 10,000 in the months since a US Airways jet ditched down in New York’s Hudson River. “Serious accidents are climbing at an even faster rate than minor incidents. There were at least 57 cases in the first seven months of ...
“The first-gen Honda CR-X combined sportiness with fuel economy in a package that was, and still is, an absolute blast to drive. It’s a combination the Japanese automaker offers again in the CR-Z, a hybrid that could be called a modern incarnation of that venerable hatchback. Honda unveiled the ...
Amish families in New York State will be exempt from a health-insurance mandate which requires Northern New Yorkers to carry health insurance or risk a fine. “Hundreds of Amish families in the region are likely to be free from that requirement. The Amish, as well as some other religious sects, are ...
Government pledges to halt growing biodiversity losses by this year have failed and the desecration of animal species is becoming even more severe.“Eight years ago, world governments made a pledge to put a halt to growing biodiversity loss by 2010. They have not succeeded. The ongoing loss of ...
Crystal formations on the moon’s surface, found by India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe, prove that “a rolling ocean of magma once engulfed the rocky body of our satellite,” says The New Scientist. “The moon is thought to have coalesced more than 4 billion years ago from the molten debris of an impact ...
A new human sex hormone that has been found in men could lead to the development of the male birth control pill, researchers have said. “Gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH)—first identified in birds about a decade ago—was recently discovered in the hypothalamus of the human brain. The ...
British candy manufacturer Cadbury has stepped up its defence against a hostile takeover bid from US-based Kraft Foods worth $17.4bn. “The UK-based confectionery multinational made the dividend pledge in its second formal response to Kraft’s cash-and-shares offer, which is looking more competitive ...
The last surviving member of the group who helped shelter Anne Frank’s family from the Nazis, Miep Gies, has died in a Dutch nursing home aged 100. “Mrs Gies, who was an office assistant, and other employees of Anne Frank's father Otto supplied food, books and news to the family as they hid in a ...
An Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed by bomb in a booby-trapped motorbike which exploded outside his home in a suburb of Tehran. “State television blamed ‘Zionists and American agents’. No specific motive was suggested for the attack, though it described Dr Ali-Mohammadi him as a ‘staunch ...
China has “successfully tested a missile interceptor” according to state media – with officials insisting the technology is “defensive” and “not targeted at any country”. “The announcement came amid repeated complaints from Beijing over the US sale of weaponry including Patriot PAC-3 air defence ...
Historian Nancy Koehn sat down with Big Think to talk about the future of business. In this video, she addresses the matter as it pertains to our workforce's youngest generation: the Millennials. A professor at Harvard Business School, Koehn interacts with students on a daily basis. For the last ...
Last month, the EPA finally, officially, publicly, decided that greenhouse gas emissions do pose a threat to the environment and to human health and wellbeing. Groups like the Environmental Defense Fund said the EPA’s “new” findings would set the stage for long-overdue climate action from the US ...
The Nation says public subsidy can save journalism in America. The Columbia Journalism Review predicts public outcry at impending Wall Street bonuses. The U.K.’s Digital Economy Bill could grant Google Search copyright immunity and require that ISPs issue warnings to illegal downloaders ...
Paleontologist Peter Ward, professor of biology at the University of Washington and an expert on mass extinction events, stopped by Big Think today to discuss nothing less than the fate of the planet. How is it looking? Not too rosy, says Ward, who has just returned from measuring CO2 levels in ...
I am traveling the next couple of days, and blogging will likely be sporadic until I return to Princeton on Wednesday just in time for a talk. In the meantime here are some articles to read. First up is the text of President Salih's interview (H/T: The Majlis.) Next is an interview with the ...