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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Life and relationships in the internet age
Those of you who have grown up on the Internet, when we look at you we see skills, competencies that we admire. We may want to learn them, but while you can try to teach them to us we will never be as competent as you are by the very nature of you're having grown up in this world, growing up with ...
We photograph everything, everywhere we go. Then we share these photos everywhere. To Larry Lessig, this is a good thing. We have shifted from being a passive "read-only" culture to a "read-write" culture in which we actively participate in a work of art, or snap shots of food in restaurants ...
One of the things that we have found in the study of networks is that whenever people are free to choose anything they want they usually choose what their friends have chosen and people tend to copy each other. This sort of fundamental mimicry or this mimicry that we humans evince is extremely ...
The issue of risk is absolutely central to being a creative person. Whether it’s being a write or an entrepreneur or an artist risk is something you have to think about a lot and deal with a lot. Trying to create a life that is fulfilling and meaningful and satisfying to you is much harder than ...
David Foster Wallace's classic 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College was not well known until after his death. In the video below, this great piece of life advice is given visual accompaniment courtesy of The Glossary. Watch here: Watch the original speech here.
In the world of Henry-Alex Rubin's new feature film, Disconnect , the hunters have a distinct advantage over the hunted and their protectors. The bullies and thugs have technology on their side, and they use it in all sorts of ways to stalk, trick, surprise and catch their prey. But don't ...
If you’re an empathetic or a kind-hearted person, how do you protect yourself? I think one of the first things to recognize is the range of styles that people bring to their everyday interactions. So on one end of the spectrum we have the givers who do tend to enjoy helping others. On the other ...
If you’re in your 40s and you’ve been studying law and you’re fed up and you don’t enjoy it and it didn’t really connect to you, you’re not going to suddenly quit law and become a rock star. It’s not realistic. You don’t have the energy. You don’t have the good looks anymore. It’s not gonna ...
Have you heard that money buys happiness? That's right, your parents lied to you again. In a recent global survey, researchers demonstrated that wealth is a key variable that can explain the disparity of happiness between countries. And we know that it's really true, because happiness research is ...
American consumers gained considerable knowledge and power when a huge Medicare database was recently distributed to the public in easy-to-understand language. The data revealed what many patients have long suspected – hospitals charge Medicare tremendously different prices for the same procedures ...
You deserve to achieve your dreams. I've learned that the quality of the questions you ask yourself (and the questions I have asked the people I've worked with) is the key determinant in unlocking, inspiring and activating change. Who doesn't want a better life for yourself and your loved ones ...
I grew up the gay child of straight parents. Most gay children are born to straight parents. And I very much wanted my parents to accept and celebrate me for exactly who I was. And my parents struggled with that a certain amount. When I was very little I had been diagnosed with dyslexia and my ...
The image above maps the location of more than 150,000 geocoded tweets that contained words deemed to be racist, homophobic or that targeted people with disabilities. The project was completed by students at Humboldt State University in California. You can view the zoomable map here.
What’s happening in Mexico today is like what was happening in Chicago during the 1920s, the days of Al Capone and alcohol prohibition times 50. You have massive levels of violence, 60,000 or more dead in these drug-related wars. You have incredibly high levels of violence and corruption and ...
"There is an electricity transmitted between a performer and a live audience," says Los Angeles performance artist, Dawn Kasper. "The exchange between the performer and the audience is powerful, intimate and specific." That is distinctly different from the act of making a video in the privacy of ...