What is Big Think?

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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John Prine, common sense conceptualist, human behavior observer/listener, with an incredible talent for the lyric. http://www.johnprine.net/

New Train
© John Prine

Full blown silence in an empty room
A former bride and a former groom
A folding table and a folding chair
A folded hand of poker there
All new directions must go everywhere
Big round people in a cool little square
You can't cut it with a boat or a plane
Man it's gonna take a new train
You'll be leaving on a new train
Far away from this world of pain
And when you look out your window you'll see
Your home your baby and your family
No melted ice cube in a paper cup
Hell you'll be happy you'll be all shook up
The friends that greet you will be
Simple and plain
When you step down from that new train
Collected volumes of history say
Man makes mistakes most everyday
The half a pound of chopped ground round
Is still a burger when it goes downtown
No faded photographs of yesterdays
Are in the books that I read these days
To fly away from that memory town
You must keep both your feet on the ground
Cause you'll be leaving on a new train
Far away from this world of pain
And when you look out your window you'll see
Your home your baby and your family
No melted ice cube in a paper cup
Hell you'll be happy you'll be all shook up
The friends that greet you will be
Simple and plain
When you step down from that new train
I'll be leaving on a new train
Far away from this world of pain
The friends that greet me will be
Simple and plain
When I step down from that new train
New train, new train.

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