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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Professor of Bioethics
Hey, listen, for the young MBA students, there’s a study that came out not too long ago, I’m sorry to say, 80 percent of MBA students in America identify with what they call Machiavellian values. That means me first all the way. But let me tell you. If you look at where that’s gotten Wall Street ...
Many people think about Darwin strictly in terms of, if you will, gladiatorial combat. Person A is in conflict with person B because they both desire some object in their environment or whatever it might be. But when you read the later Darwin, The Descent of Man, it’s very clear. He ...
I’m from Cleveland. At the beginning of a downturn in 2008, there were two car dealerships on Mayfield Road. One was Toyota, one was Honda. Business started to deteriorate and one dealership decided to do furloughs. So the salesmen and staff just took that afternoon off a week, unpaid. But ...