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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: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do?

Jim Barksdale: Well now what I do is I’m a philanthropic investor. And I invest primarily in early childhood education and services. I spent quite a bit of time and money on the subject of early literacy. What I did in my business career, I would describe as I applied systems . . . solutions to large business problems. I was in at the early days of Federal Express building . . . I was the Chief Information Officer back then after I’d left IBM and other private businesses. And I was . . . did that for a while building the worldwide tracking system. And then I was Chief Operating Officer at Federal Express for about 10 years implementing lots of systems – aviation systems, computer systems, human resources systems – around the world for the company as we expanded it to 129 countries. I had . . . By the time I left there was 100,000 people working for me, so I learned a great deal from that experience. And then I went and ran a largest . . . then the largest cellular company in the world – McCall Cellular out of Seattle. We sold that to AT&T and I became Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Wireless back in the early ‘90s. And then I left that at the behest of some people who are now great friends of mine to go with a little startup. I figured one more bite at the apple, so I went down to Palo Alto in Mountain View, California and became the Chief Executive Officer of a local startup called Netscape Communications. And we taught the world how to use the Internet with the browser. And then we sold that to AOL in ’99, and that’s when I basically retired from active business and went on the Time Warner board. I’m on several boards, both public and private. I’m Chairman of the Board of the Mayo Clinic out of Rochester, Minnesota. I’m on other private boards that are interested in healthcare and human services

Recorded on: 7/5/07