Guest Thinkers

When you look at how Apple completely disrupted the music industry with the introduction of the iTunes digital music store back in 2001, it’s natural to ask: Which other companies […]

n In a digital world, passionate consumers are taking on the role of online brand ambassadors, and nearly anyone has the ability to influence a brand’s reputation online. To explore […]

Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ma let you finish, because you have one of the bestselling albums of the past five years. Not to get all Kanye about […]

When the smartest guy (or gal) in an industry decides to throw in the towel on a business model, it’s time to stand up and take notice. This week, the […]

As Steven Johnson notes in his wonderful new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, innovation often happens when hunches and concepts from different disciplines bump up against each other in […]

A number of visionary companies that are changing the way we think about consumption: Zipcar, FreeCycle, Netflix, Etsy, CouchSurfing and Zopa.

“Creativity begins when you cut a zero from your budget…” – Brazilian architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner With all the talk out of Washington this week about reduced federal […]

Walk down the street of any community in America and look up – what do you see? A mass of tangled wires that comprise the high-voltage tranmissions lines of the […]

n During the peak of the social media revolution, “lean forward” was one of the buzzwords that was bandied about quite often to explain the changing habits of media consumption. […]

We’re experiencing a retro-digital (or is post-digital?) movement in the tech world: just today, I read about a gaming company (Discovery Bay Games) that has figured out to convert your […]

The current issue of Wallpaper* magazine – in addition to its feature on the global Design Awards 2011 Winners – has a wonderfully thought-provoking article about the growing popularity of […]

n Over the past 12 months, the whole notion of “design thinking” has come into vogue. Not only are there entire books devoted to “design thinking” – like Tim Brown’s […]

Bluto Blutarsky might just have something to teach Corporate America. Just as fat, drunk and stupid is no way to make it through life, big, wealthy and bloated is no […]

Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about visual storytelling and the various ways that the Internet and digital devices like the iPad require us to process information and content. […]

While a number of leading technology companies (IBM, Cisco, HP) have launched impressive Smart Grid initiatives, the broader public still doesn’t really understand why the “Smart Grid” is so important […]

The argument for or against e-books always seems to boil down to one central issue: e-books can not be touched, bookmarked and lovingly annotated in the same way that real […]

Yesterday, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck New Zealand’s second largest city, a potential aftershock from an even bigger quake last September.

Sam Stein asks, “Would The Democrats Have Been Better Off Letting Walker’s Bill Pass?” Better off how? If Wisconsin’s Democratic legislators had sat still and let the bill pass, the […]

So I’ve said before evolution is getting more personal.  I’m now going to say a few things about the personal point of view of our time.  I’m just trying to […]

Want to get a some more volcano news from aspiring bloggers in my First Year class? Check out their first posts on the blog for the class – we’ll be […]

Magma wells could prove to be a very powerful new source of energy—up to five times more productive than standard geothermal wells. 

How much more crowded is our planet going to get? Will we keep on expanding indefinitely, or are we approaching the upper limit? Can the planet sustain ten billion people?

Unfortunately, there is no feasible way, certainly not in the United States, to go from the present world to a world without guns, says Nobel Laureate Gary Becker.

Born at the end of the so-called “long Enlightenment,” Lincoln had no reservations about being guided by “Reason” or preferring it to passion. Providence, however, also played its role.

“Satire works by inference,” cartoonist G.B. Trudeau says in Brian Walker’s new book Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau. “What you condemn should reveal what you value, what you […]

After a few months of intermittent explosions since late 2010, Bulusan in the Philippines looks to be at it again (although not really a “major volcanic eruption” as the Huffington Post […]

A new study of Sweden’s sex trade laws sheds new light on the age-old debate about criminalizing prostitution.

What did countries such as Britain and Italy think they were doing when they began to cultivate their relationships with Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gadaffi a few years back?

I said in my previous post that I had a second big move to announce. Well, it’s now official. Starting in August I will be a faculty member at the […]

So the BIG THINKers have reminded us that one of the most personal and technologically promising ideas of our time is DESIGNING BABIES–or making the result of our reproduction better than natural. I’ve […]