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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Increasingly innovative computer scripts are being created that automate entire criminal processes—processes that, in the past, used to require human intervention. Don’t like your boss? Threaten to tell his wife about the affair with his secretary unless he pays you to keep quiet. The problem ...
What is the Big Idea? Social media has been inspiring change in the way business leaders interact with their customer base. And for good reasons. Companies that adopt social technologies can see a 50 percent increase in customer satisfaction, 48 percent increase in business leads, and 24 percent ...
What’s the Big Idea? “Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets,” said Andy Warhol. It seems America agrees: adult entertainment is an estimated $10 billion dollar industry in the U.S., though the ethics of capturing and manufacturing sexual desire on ...
Numerous studies have shown us how important sleep can be. Not only does it revitalize our bodies, it also gives the brain time to sort through all the information it has received throughout our hectic day. Sleep deprivation, and a lack of quality sleep, can lead to weight problems, high blood ...
There are approximately 105,000 people currently on the waiting list for solid organ transplant in the United States. 18 of those people die every day. These deaths are due entirely to the fact that there are far more people on the waiting list than there are available organs. Kidney transplant ...
Men have stronger sexual desires than do women…Women are the more monogamous gender…Homosexuality is an unnatural sexual behavior. Sexual beliefs, like these, are so widespread that we have collectively come to view them as being embedded in our biology. Cross-cultural data collected from pre ...
Over 200 powerful women gathered in New York City last week to discuss the idea of adding more women to corporate boards, an idea that seems to be gaining traction. Big Think had the opportunity to speak with Susan Stautberg, who co-founded the group WomenCorporateDirectors, an organization that ...
You heard it here first. NO NEW BUILDINGS. The future of architecture hangs in the balance–a balance of energy and environmental constraints that will profoundly alter the way humans interact with their environment. For centuries architects have seen themselves as creators of the built environment ...
"My guess is that the Y chromosome of every living man has spent at least one generation in the testis of a warlord," the Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes once told The New York Times . One sexually prolific warlord in particular was Genghis Khan, whose Y chromosome is now found in 16 million men in ...
Upon awakening this morning, and for no discernable reason, my first thought focused on religion, and why there is more disdain among the religious, of religions that are not their own, than there is of the devil in any religion. Such scorn seems an utter impossibility given that all religions ...
Remember the scene in "The Social Network" when Mark Zuckerberg's friend and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is pushed out of the company and physically escorted out of the building? Some believe Saverin got his sweet revenge when he spilled the beans as Ben Mezrich's main source for The ...
The Mind/Body Split in American Acting (and culture) On the whole, and with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood expects its great actors to play themselves in every role. We want primal authenticity, and view physicalization of character with suspicion. Actors who excel at altering the way they ...
Those who hope and/or argue that economic interdependence between the U.S. and China will help to prevent a war between them are often told to recall Norman Angell’s 1910 book, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (this link goes to G. P. Putnam’s Sons ...
Jason Silva is an optimist. With a capital O. His optimism hits you full force the moment you meet him – the broad, beaming grin, the reassuring handshake . . . no, before that, in the form of multiple enthusiastic exclamation points in his every email. More specifically, he’s optimistic about the ...
Clothes make the man. And in the case of Mark Zuckerberg, it is the hoodie, which is part of a look that has endeared him to some as the founder and very public face of Facebook. To his admirers, the hoodie is a display of authenticity. He is about to become one of the richest men in the world, but ...