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.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
How dangerous can media consolidation get? According to one writer, it can be deadly. In his book Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media , Eric Klinenberg describes how on one night in 2002, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed outside of Minot, North Dakota, sending a ...
After 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was shot and killed by police during a raid filmed for a cable show, experts are asking whether the officers responded to the cameras with violence. This past Sunday, May 16, police raided Jones's Detroit home, searching for a suspect of a murder that had ...
The argument that "we take the internet for granted" may seem like a tired straw man. But perhaps the ideology of the internet could stand a second look. Maybe we don't actually understand the extent to which all the hardware and software that allows us to access the web shapes the ways in ...
Nestle has been forced to change its environmentally-destructive business practices after a social media coup; what can netroots activists learn from the victory? After it was revealed that the Swiss food giant sourced its palm oil through Sinar Mas—a company whose operations contribute to ...
Sick of hearing about a slow-moving sheet of oil floating about in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? You may not be alone. According to The New Republic's Bradford Plumer, the network coverage of the ongoing oil spill by doesn't really stack up to past spills in either the amount of stories ...