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: Do you consider yourself an expatriate?Lyall: Well, unfortunately, I do. You know, I’ve been there for now 13 years. But I think my sensibility is still much more American. I don’t think I’m English, but, in some ways, maybe I’m not that American either. I’ve lived away for so long. And you kind of, as a newspaper reporter, you’re also always on the outside of things. So, you’re never really part of any culture, I don’t think, and, if you were, it’ll be hard to have the distance you need to write effectively about it. But, I guess, I’d be considered an expatriate. Sure, I’ve been away for so long. Question: Will you one day return to America?Lyall: I think I’d come back. I love New York, and I feel like I fit in here better than I do in England. But we’ve got two kids and they’re kind of English kids now, and so we’ll wait and see, you know. If they want to go to college here, it may be a good time to come back, or who knows, you know? It’s so easy to get back and forth between the two cities now.