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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

Tom Stewart: The environment would definitely be one, and climate. And what we’re doing to the climate is one. There would definitely be one of the salient issues of our time. Another I think that is salient is this . . . this struggle between the forces of purpose; deliberate ignorance and the forces of thinking, intellect and research and so on and so forth. I mean it’s shameful or to see some candidates from presidents saying, “Well, I’m really not so sure about evolution.”

They should be ashamed of themselves and their mothers. I mean, their mothers should be ashamed of them. It’s just shocking. And to see people pandering to ignorance for short-term gain – whether it’s about climate or about other things – is to me, absolutely shameful. And it’s not just a U.S. problem and it makes my blood boil. And I think that may be related to that other issue that I mentioned, which is the very skewed distribution of wealth. Because if I can see a five-year opportunity to make so damn-much money that it’s just doesn’t matter, then that it just doesn’t matter. Does that opportunity allow me to become a sociopath in ways that I wouldn’t become if the opportunity were not quite so huge?

June 22, 2007