[Warning: Long post ahead] Yesterday I took the ACT college entrance exam for the first time. At age 44. It all started with Ira Socol’s blog post, which argued that […]
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The brain is a complex and demanding machine. Given the amount of resources required to run the average brain, it’s no surprise that it takes a few shortcuts when it […]
Bistra Milovansky chases inspiration for a living. The Bulgarian immigrant and self-described “holistic lawyer” can often be found doing business from a hammock in Costa Rica, working on her laptop […]
The WikiLeaks founder has released a half-hour interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a well-known Middle East figure who has not given an interview to the West in six years.
What is the Big Idea? Samir N. Kapadia’s career in Washington D. C. seemed routine in comparison to the exciting jobs his friends had in India, a surging nation in […]
Van Jones told The New York Times that Glenn Beck pushed him out of a job and his advocacy organization pushed Beck out of one. “Now we’re both irrelevant!” he […]
As I’ve argued on climate change, localizing the issue is one way to overcome the polarization that has paralyzed national-level action. And this strategy holds not just for climate, but […]
Two exclusively online media sources have won Pulitzer Prizes for journalistic reporting, effectively ending the divide between old and new media. We are all one, but is that a good thing?
So the final issue in my class in PUBLIC POLICY this semester is HIGHER EDUCATION. Here are some controversial propositions generated from papers I’ve just read from the class. I’m […]
When we think of tyrants or dictators, I think many of us conjure up either Orwellian or, rather, Stalinist-type regimes; but as these are steadily disappearing from the world, we […]
Big Think is pleased to announce we are soliciting applications for the following position: Social Media Intern Big Think is looking for a Social Media Editor to run our daily […]
In our increasingly complex world we can’t afford to silo ourselves off in little online and offline subcultures.
President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation’s massive and destructive wealth inequality.
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.
Like their namesakes from fable who live under bridges, “Trolls” are people who write nasty remarks and live underneath an online article, in its Comments section. Media mavens and content […]
A group of scientists have laid out an ambitious plan to tackle one of the grand challenges facing mankind in the early 21st century–develop a supercomputer that can simulate the brain.
Jonah Lehrer talks with Big Think’s Jason Gots about failure as an integral, essential part of the creative process, and why American schools are so good at killing creativity.
Several weeks ago, you may have read Frozen. Canada’s Anti-Spam Reporting Centre: 5 Reasons Why The Fed’s Latest Flight of Fancy is Dead on Arrival by Claudiu Popa on this site.Popa […]
Remember when people used to believe that it took a village to raise a child? It seems that the last vestige of that sentiment took its dying breath in recent […]
When I started to blog about online education back in January 2009 frankly no one cared. If you take a look at the major tech blogs today you notice that this […]
In a Q&A interview with Jason Zengerle of New York magazine, outgoing Congressman Barney Frank offers a diagnosis of several of the major drivers of polarization in American politics that […]
How could Instagram create an app worth $1 billion while Kodak, the grandfather of photography, went belly up? When it comes to innovation, business experts say culture is the key.
A host of new apps allows parents to digitally track every event in their newborn’s life. But will the data deluge make people better parents or just more obsessed with data points?
By crunching data posted by Facebook’s 845 million users, professional research teams are coming to a better understanding of human behavior through how they behave online.
I started a version of this post a couple weeks ago, but since then the dispute between libertarians about the place of “social justice” in their philosophy has become white-hot, […]
The same cultural zeitgeist that gave us the metrosexual – the urban male obsessive about grooming and personal appearance – is also creating its digital equivalent: the datasexual. The datasexual […]
Ned Resnikoff picks up on my old post, via a terrific recent one by Daniel Little, on the radicalism of John Rawls’ position on economic liberty: If we’ve to fairly […]
On the night of April 13, 1970, astronaut Jack Swigert famously beemed into NASA headquarters to declare “Houston, we have a problem.” A nation of inspired onlookers watched in suspense […]
While we don’t always realize it we are better connected, healthier and more secure than any generation before us.
A subtle but undeniable shift has been taking place in American corporate management theory. Roughly, the change corresponds to psychology’s shift from punishment & reward focused Skinnerian behavioralism to a focus on human relationships and development.