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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What's the Latest Development? Going live this week is what may be the world's first reality show that won't air on TV: @SummerBreak follows a group of Los Angeles-area teens as they enjoy their last summer before attending college in the fall. The eight-week series will consist entirely of a ...
What's the Latest Development? Amid calls in the European Union for more detailed online privacy laws, the Association of French Archivists is pushing back with a petition of their own claiming that allowing individuals to remove personal data from the Internet "could complicate the collection ...
It’s a fact of life in the 21st century that we’re all very busy. If you do a gut check on yourself, you’d likely admit that you are busier this year than you were last year. Every month seems to go by faster than last month, making us realize that the pace of life is accelerating, definitely not ...
There is a tendency for people to think science knows more than it knows. We hear phrases like "gaps in our knowledge" all the time, when in fact what we mainly have is knowledge in our gaps. The vastness of our scientific ignorance is especially evident when it comes to explaining how life ...
The anonymous author of the Big Think Neurobonkers blog has published a wee reply to my recent posts arguing that NSA leaker Edward Snowden should be prosecuted: To act on one’s conscience and leak information that is believed to be in the public interest is a noble choice. The ...
Youth unemployment has reached crisis levels in several European countries: 39% in Italy, 55% in Spain, and 60% in Greece. Now, early retirement, a so-called economic fix that I'd hoped was dead and buried, is being exhumed and put forward as a viable solution. It's a zombie idea, and we need to ...
What's the Latest Development? The election of moderate Iranian presidential candidate Hassan Rohani represents an opportunity for the West to engage Iran with fresh negotiations over its nuclear energy program, which is feared to shroud more nefarious intentions. "Rohani has called for an end ...
What's the Latest Development? Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who went public with the NSA's clandestine data mining operation, forms part of an increasing crossover between government and private cybersecurity organizations. "As a result of the leaks, politicians are likely to debate the ...
Consider this individual: She has appeared on ABC’s “What Would you Do?” and is the ambassador for “Healing Hands for Haiti,” which aims to bring rehabilitation medicine to the country. She has attended Westminster College and Brigham Young University. Her profile explains that she wants to ...
I’m writing this blog post from tens of thousands of feet above the midwestern United States, on an airline that I won’t name here. The flight got off to a rocky start, and before we left the airport I had lodged a complaint with the airline via Twitter and its website. Should I be rewarded ...
What's the Latest Development? A massive urban development program, in which the Chinese government aims to relocate 250 million peasant farmers to burgeoning urban centers, is set to begin in earnest this fall. "The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises ...
For some years now I've been involved with a small community group. It's a shoe-string organization that depends entirely on volunteers. These curious creatures have a predictable life-cycle. It begins when someone shyly asking if the group needs help, then hanging about trying to be useful and not ...
The question of when we’ll be able to build a brain to act and think like us is so far off in the future in my opinion but it’s interesting to think about because it forces you to actually see what you have and to try to quantify it in a way that could be instantiated in an artifact. That’s a very ...
Until the late 20th century, Western approaches to mental well-being focused mainly on treatments directly affecting brain function (via surgery, electric shock or pharmaceuticals, for example) or insight-oriented psychotherapy intended to unearth the root causes of mental distress and ...
What's the Latest Development? The population boom of the modern era--there are about seven billion people today living on the planet, up from two billion in 1920--has resulted in an aging world population. By 2025, the world will have almost 800 million people over the age of 65. About 556 ...