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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Right now, just hours after someone detonated an improvised explosive device and killed four Canadian soldiers and one Canadian journalist in Afghanistan, I'm reflecting on words Canada's defense minister spoke back in March. Reacting to the pseudo-apology of a Fox News host who'd belittled Canada ...
The intellectual trap of exploring a new place — whether through actual travel or by reading a book set there — is the practically unconscious assumption that we can generalize. Having just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , for example, I'm needing to remind myself that I have no fast ...
I hope the New York Times will do a follow-up story on Friday's "G.I.’s in Iraq Hope to Heal Sacred Walls." The story — like an NPR broadcast in 2007 and a Smithsonian piece in 2008 — doesn't answer a question that hovers over the U.S. troops trying to restore Iraq's oldest Christian monastery: By ...
The Good Soldiers is nearly unbearable. Relentlessly so. Commendably so. Whether you're a combat veteran, a soldier's mom, an Iraqi, the 43rd U.S. president, an ordinary American, or some pundit who likes to make bold, loud, baseless, unshakeable declarations about the glory or evil of war ...
In a recent NPR interview, National Book Award finalist Daniyal Mueenuddin spoke with arresting candor about Pakistan, using the word "feudalism" to describe the structure of life in the Indus River Valley where his family owns land. This exchange between Mueenuddin and NPR host Steve Inskeep ...