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We are Big Idea Hunters…

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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Blog Posts

Strange Maps

314 - Watch the Road: World's Earliest SatNav

Missing
over 4 years ago

    Satellite navigation (SatNav) is a lot older than previously thought. In fact, it’s even decades older than man-made satellites themselves. This fantastic contraption, called the ‘Routefinder’, showed 1920s drivers in the UK the roads they were travelling down, gave them the mileage ...

Eruptions

Southern Chile says it is ready for your visit

Missing
over 4 years ago

It has been awhile since we've talked of Chaiten, so I thought I'd touch upon "the eruption of 2008" (really, no one else is close). Spring time has arrived in southern Chile, and the Patagonia area has cleaned up a lot of the ash from the eruption (but not the town of Chaiten). National Tourism ...

Eruptions

Small eruption at Shiveluch

Missing
over 4 years ago

Shiveluch in Kamchatka experience a small eruption today. Russian authorities reported a ~4,500 meter ash column with associated local earthquakes, likely related to the eruption. In the same article, both Karymsky and Klyuchevskaya Sopka (also known as Kliuchevskoi) are erupting or showing ...

Daylight Atheism

The Fading of the Church

Dabanner
over 4 years ago

The growth of atheism is coming at the expense of religion. As freethought makes gains in society, it will inevitably start by appealing to those who are religious only by default - the people who go to church because they've never known an alternative, those who are receptive to our message and ...

Eruptions

Eruptions Poll results

Missing
over 4 years ago

Thanks to everyone who has responded to my Eruptions poll so far. Looks like we have a couple clear favorites, based on the results right now: Profiles of historic eruptions - 35% Profiles of active volcanoes - 33% Discussion of monitoring techniques - 18% Discussion of volcanic ...

Eruptions

The fun of random speculation

Missing
over 4 years ago

If anyone has been watching the earthquakes worldwide today, you might have noticed that there have been three >M2.5 earthquakes in the Yellowstone Caldera today at depths <10 km. Not to say that it is anything, but just something to note.

Eruptions

The big boulders of Tonga

Missing
over 4 years ago

This might not be directly related to a volcanic eruption, but it has been picked up by a lot of news sources, so I thought I'd give it a mention. A report from researchers at University of Texas hypothesize that some very large coral boulders (up to 10 meters tall) that can be found on the ...

Eruptions

When there is no news ...

Missing
over 4 years ago

As you could probably figure out, sometimes there isn't much new volcano-related news out there in the get interwebs. I've been trying to think of ways to fill in some of that time, but I thought I'd ask you, the readers, what you'd like to see. Please respond to the poll (below) and leave me ...

Strange Maps

313 - A Handy Map of San Francisco Bay

Missing
over 4 years ago

The metropolitan area surrounding San Francisco Bay, better known as the Bay Area, includes over 100 cities (San Francisco, Oakland and San José being among the most populous) and counts about 7 million people. It is the 4th-largest metropolitan area in the US and the 47th-largest in the world ...

Strange Maps

310 - The World, Justified

Missing
over 4 years ago

  Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain are a pair of young Brazilian artists, working in their home country and in France. Some of their work explores fonts and maps. Typography meets cartography in this little work, entitled ‘The World, Justified’. It shows the world we live in as only one of ...