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.
Contributing Writer
Do you know what is in your digital dossier? Since you began to have a life on the Web, data has been accruing about the habits and interests of your online life. The generation of young people emerging in the digital age have the unique experience of having the entirety of their lives immersed in ...
On the night of April 13, 1970, astronaut Jack Swigert famously beemed into NASA headquarters to declare “Houston, we have a problem.” A nation of inspired onlookers watched in suspense as the Apollo 13 crew worked frantically against the clock, and their failing ship, to return to earth alive to ...
What's the Big Idea? Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world, created a stir when he recently declared that he was not an atheist after all, but an agnostic. The news, which came during a debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury last month, seemed at first to be a big get for God ...
Do you believe in God? Sometimes this question warrants more than just a yes or no answer. To categorize one's own beliefs about the possibility of the existence of a deity, Dawkins proposed a "spectrum of probabilities" in his book The God Delusion. This spectrum consists of two extremes -- strong ...
John Horgan, author of the book The End of War argues that warring or violent behavior is not innate to human nature. Of the many people that Horgan has questioned, from war journalist Sebastian Junger to the students in his classes, most believe war is a part of human nature. War will always be ...