BY PEADER COYLE Nick Bostrom, a philosopher with a scientific background, serves on the faculty of the Future of Humanity Institute at the James Martin School at Oxford University. He […]
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If you ever find yourself in a bar that takes art history trivia bets, here’s a sure winner: Who is the only artist to be named by TIME Magazine as […]
I hear quite often enough that my values (liberal if not worse, feminist, tolerant of same-sex marriage) are responsible for American marriage decay. This baffles me anecdotally, as I canvass […]
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 […]
Last month, I posted my review of “An Unquenchable Thirst”, Mary Johnson’s luminous and enlightening memoir about the twenty years she spent as one of Mother Teresa’s nuns. After writing […]
The incredible (and indeed untrue) story of President Taylor’s APE
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Dr. Francine Shapiro, a senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, director of the EMDR Institute, and founder of […]
Over the weekend, I looked back at this blog’s most popular posts from 2011. I like to believe they were popular because readers found them interested and recommended them to […]
Hacking is about having a small group of individuals who are skilled enough to attack much larger prey. Thanks to their attack, future technological innovations flourish—for a time…
So we’ve basically completed our two-year series of conferences, publications, and such at Berry College funded by a grant from the Science of Virtues project at the University of Chicago. […]
Smartphones are incredible education, business and entertainment devices but their ubiquity has otherwise normal people acting batty. Businesses must take the lead to restoring sanity.
What is the Big Idea? Attention foie gras lovers: your favorite French delicacy will now be made in China. The world’s largest goose farm and foie gras factory will open […]
The U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has the unique mission of protecting national security by maintaining technological superiority. If the new DARPA-funded “cheetah” robot is any indication, the agency is […]
What’s the Big Idea? Some genius at marketing giant BBH decided to outfit 13 volunteer homeless people in Austin, Texas with 4G Wi-Fi transmitters, turning them into human Wi-Fi hotspots […]
While private enterprise is not going to take us back to the Moon or to Mars, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says there is still a role for these companies to play.
A forthcoming paper explores the biomedical modification of humans in order to stop us from consuming red meat. This would have a mitigating effect on climate change.
A survey for Birmingham Science City amongst 500 15 year-olds across the UK came up with some pretty telling numbers about how technology changes society at its roots. When asked […]
A new mobile service uses location data, i.e. where you are, to create a social network with like-minded people in your immediate vicinity. Would you be willing to meet a stranger this way?
‘Personal clouds’ will replace the primacy of the PC by 2014, says the technology research firm Gartner. The future promises a world of decentralized computing across multiple devices.
Sharing so much information online may have knock on effects when its comes to government search and seizure law, expanding government power, says Yale’s Information Society Project.
When you read a news story about a threat or danger or hazard, what do you want to know? Most likely, you want to know if it’s a risk […]
In an interview with Big Think, Michael Ellsberg talks about the importance of using eye contact to establish your social presence. Then there’s Susan Cain, author of the recent bestseller, QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking . . .
Like many others I mistook the first John Carter trailer I saw for a Pepsi commercial. And like so many others, I did not go to see the film when it opened […]
Michael Ellsberg’s “eye contact revolution” is aimed not only at careerists, but at the social and spiritual heart of our glowing screen-obsessed world.
Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US) will hold a debate to hash out and answer the question: Does China do capitalism better than America? “China seems to have emerged unscathed from the […]
A new book, Coming Apart by Charles Murphy, cites statistics that suggest the class divide in America is growing. But why? And what to do about it? Gary Becker and Richard Posner weigh in.
What is the Big Idea? Eating meat or fish can make a crab out of you, according to a study published by Nutrition Journal. Omnivorous diets are high in arachidonic […]
They should just rename Fox News the “Black Presidents Scare The Shit Out Of Us” network. If nothing else, Sean Hannity is consistent—he inundates the airwaves every day with “Obama […]
Welcome to an ongoing feature on the Floating University blog, FU Asks, where we open up the academic debate on our e-learning platform to the Big Think community. This week […]