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.
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One would think humans would have a notion of preservation lofty enough not to get too bogged down in the semantics of the climate debate, but such is not the case. Cap and trade, polar melting, mega-storms, sea level rise, feedback loops, population die-off. The language of climate change is ...
Blogger Stevel Rubel spoke with Big Think yesterday on the the future of internet advertising, the semantic web and digital media. He's a smart guy. He also has a really cool title at his day job. As Director of Insights at Edelman Digital, Rubel follows internet trends and flags them for their ...
Though support for European fringe groups generally runs in the single percentage points, voter turnout in next week's elections might not run much higher, which bodes well for those outside the mainstream. Transitions Online reports a full 150 seats in the 736-seat Parliament could go to fringe ...
The popular notion that food trends improve over time might be little more than a foodie's conceit. Certainly, we have cast aside the Twinkies for arugula and the lard for grapeseed oil. Yet there may be a number of missing chapters in our national food narrative we would be wise to rediscover ...
For a president elected on his promise of pulling the U.S. out of Iraq in a jiffy and treating the world at large with a softer hand, observers say Obama is carrying on in much the same tradition of his predecessor when it comes to foreign policy. Though he comes armed with a wealth of soft ...