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.

Big Think Features:

12,000+ Expert Videos

1

Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.

Watch videos

World Renowned Bloggers

2

Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.

Go to blogs

Big Think Edge

3

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.

Find out more
Close
With rendition switcher

Transcript

Ray Kurzweil: This is kind of the advanced stage of Epoch 4, where humans are creating technology and putting our knowledge base in that technology.  Epoch 5 is when we’re going to merge with that non-biological intelligence we’re creating.  To do that, we need to create intelligence that’s equal to us and we also need the nanotechnology to put it inside our bodies and brains.  I mean, this is almost in my body and brain - it may as well be; I wouldn’t lose it that way - but that’s where we’re headed.  That’ll be Epoch 5.  And then Epoch 6 is when we go out into the rest of the universe.

So, I have these six epochs for really stages in the evolution of information - started out with atomic information and then chemical information, biological information, then information in brains of organisms, then technology, and finally we will merge our intelligence into the technology and take advantage of what I call the "law of accelerating returns," which is the fact that information technology grows exponentially.  That's the force that's behind what’s referred to as the singularity.

Directed / Produced by
Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd

More from the Big Idea for Tuesday, October 16 2012

Today's Big Idea: Human-Technological Co-Evolution

Does the rate of evolution match the rate of technological advance? Not at all. However, there are insightful analogies that can be made between these two processes, which are measurable.  Huma... Read More…

 

Ray Kurzweil: Thinking Thro...

Newsletter: Share: