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Big Think is excited to announce Humanizing Technology, a virtual expo in partnership with Bing, whose goal is to identify new technologies that integrate themselves seamlessly into our lives, capitalize on our unique strengths, and amplify the best of human nature.    

Can the human mind be explained as a solely material thing? Can a machine ever be conscious?

What’s the Big Idea? Up up down down left right left right B A start. Press these buttons in succession while playing any one of the more than 60 video games […]

What’s the Big Idea? What do an art exhibit, live music, and a car manufacturer have in common? A lot more than you’d think. The Avant/Garde Diaries, a digital interview […]

What’s the Big Idea? On May 20, Pakistan shut down Twitter for eight hours after the microblogging site refused to remove tweets that linked to a page encouraging people to post pictures […]

Even though AI systems are no substitute for interactions with a real human, they do have the potential to improve our quality of life.

Sex. What a compelling topic! As a spiritual teacher, whether I’m giving a lecture or leading a retreat, whenever the subject comes up, a very particular form of focused attention […]

The average human lives at 24 degrees north or south from the equator 

A Q&A With Dr. John L. Casti, author, X-Events: The Collapse of Everything Dr. John L. Casti is a complexity scientist. This is one of those job descriptions I would […]

Sherry Turkle is at it again in the NYT.  When we expect more from technology, her story goes, we inevitably expect less from ourselves.  In a high-tech world, we flee […]

I write and tweet @DrDigipol about the intersection of politics and the digital. These days, digital touches everything. I suppose I could write about anything, then, but I tend to […]

Here’s an article by Thomas C. Terry  getting a lot of attention on how openly our professors disparage Mormons in  ways they would be ashamed to talk about  members of […]

3-D printers will revolutionize manufacturing and cloud-based computing power will solve complex problems. Combined, these technologies will create a future of abundance.

Anxiety Creates Extra Tasks – And Problems Have you ever had one of those ‘super-productive’ days where you burn through all of your tasks and then feel… strangely hollow? This […]

As Dr. Michio Kaku has been predicting for years, we are inching ever closer to producing virtual reality contact lenses that will add a layer of interactive, rich information over our mundane […]

Casablanca, kissing, the giddy exchange of bodily fluids, the pressing of the flesh—It’s all so 20th century. Today there doesn’t need to be sex in your sex anymore. The “virtual,” […]

Information is power. The Internet has made it possible to share and spread information faster than ever before. Unprecedented levels of access to information means that democracy is bound to take root and flower in even the most authoritarian corners of the world — right? Not necessarily, says MacKinnon.

The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, characterized “cyber” as an “existential threat to the United States of America” in a recent issue of Fortune […]

George Soros last Sunday blamed Angela Merkel for the euro crisis – and gave her three months to fix it. Speaking at the 7th Festival of Economics in Trento (Italy), […]

The speed with which KONY 2012 went viral around the world has been stunning. Even if you don’t love the politics of Invisible Children’s “Stop Kony” campaign, it’s hard to […]

A few years ago I gave a sermon at my (very liberal) church asking the question: “What determines the limit to our tolerance?” After the service, one member of the […]

For most of the world, music lessons are a luxury of the bourgeois class. Both musical instruments and music lessons are pricey. As the average American moves his home several […]

BY JASON SILVA “Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.”   –Alphonse de Lamartine, French romantic poet. PART I: DREAMING WITH […]

The mobile health revolution, which started and took off in overseas emerging markets, is rapidly making its way to the U.S. The past few months have brought a surge of […]

Two years ago, Mind Candy was just another online gaming company. In one “last roll of the dice” it created virtual kids’ game Moshi Monsters, which now has 50 million users.

A former Apple engineer who launched his own wireless networking start up puts his customers in direct contact with his engineers. Running a lean business keeps him competitive.

In today’s excerpt – the accelerating pace of change. I began my career in financial services in the late 1970s. In my first decade in that industry, there were only […]

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11, U.S. Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power To declare War” Rep. Ron Paul in the U.S. House of Representatives, October 3, 2002: “The process by which […]

In today’s excerpt – a disruption in history. Most people assume that history is a gradual continuum from the past to the present, each century being a little better and […]

I just read this great essay by Ari N. Schulman in that indispensable journal THE NEW ATLANTIS with the telling title “GPS and the End of the Road.”  One of Schulman’s […]