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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Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
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Contributor, Big Think
Where did America’s workers go? The future of the American economy may hinge on the answer. The US economy added 165,000 new jobs in April and the unemployment rate fell to 7.5%. But labor force participation remained low. In fact, the labor force participation rate fell three points since the ...
Imagine that the president of the United States could legally order the preemptive killing of any American citizen he deemed a potential threat to the country. A Justice Department white paper that was recently obtained by NBC News comes close to making that claim, if not in quite those words ...
We aren’t doing enough. The human race is in more danger than it might seem. The human race has always faced a certain amount of what Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom calls “existential risk.” Existential risk—or “x-risk”—is the risk that something might completely wipe out the human race or ...
Congress created the debt ceiling crisis almost entirely on its own. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress what’s known as the “the power of the purse”: Congress alone can authorize spending, collect taxes, borrow money, or print money. The president can propose a budget, but it’s Congress ...
In a 1930 essay called “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,” the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that “assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years.” The Great ...