What is Big Think?

We are Big Idea Hunters…

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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Transcript

Question: What are the recurring themes in literature?

Dana Gioia: Well you know, I think that literature is one of the necessary human studies, because the beginning of human wisdom is to recognize that, you know, we are the product of history. That millions, billions of people have lived before us. They led lives that are startlingly similar to ours even though they were in different places and different times. And what literature allows you to do is to create a conversation with the past and the present out of what you can imagine and create a future. And so it gives you a sense of the reality of other people’s lives from the inside – from the “dailyness” of their existence – not only in the peak moments, but in their ordinary moments. And what that, I think, does is build compassion. It builds humanity. And it builds a sense . . . and the sense of what the changeable parts of human nature are and what the permanent parts are.

Recorded on: 07.06.07