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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In his recent post, fellow Big Think blogger Adam Lee blames the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict on competing religious fundamentalisms. The recent renewal of fighting on the Gaza border, he writes, is being inflamed and prolonged by religious zealotry on both sides. Whether it's ...
Senator Bill Bradley sits down with Big Think to discuss his latest book, We Can All Do Better, out in hardcover today, May 8, 2012. He talks about what it means to be American, and how that has changed since his grandfather's time. "The middle class has really taken it on the chin," he says ...
The troubling chronicle of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has me thinking about the trial of another dissident who faced a life-changing dilemma of his own 2411 years ago in ancient Athens. Chen, like Socrates, is a gadfly on the hide of his polity. Where Socrates was condemned for ...
What will the world look like without a single superpower setting the rules? That's the question that Ian Bremmer, the political risk expert, tries to answer in his new book, "Every Nation for Itself". Bremmer's focus is as much on politics as economics, but I think he has some useful insights ...
What is the Big Idea? After years of political and economic deadlock, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) is coming out of stagnation at a dizzying speed. Since he took office in March 2011, President Thein Sein released a number of political prisoners and took steps to reform the economy. And ...
On Tuesday, April 4th, 2012, we had the pleasure of interviewing Richard Tafel, human rights activist and founder of the policy advocacy organizations The Log Cabin Republicans and The Public Squared. Tafel, who has been named by Newsweek as one of the 30 most influential gay leaders in the United ...
What is the Big Idea? While the world was celebrating Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi's party's victory in Sunday's special elections in Myanmar, a new currency exchange rate went into effect. Effective April 1, the exchange rate is now at 818 kyat to the dollar and the country is ...
Bano, a mother of five who lives in the ancient quarter of Lahore—the cultural center—was without power for days. She wanted to make goat stew, a family favorite and a dish that can take hours to prepare. So that morning, Bano built a makeshift stove with wood and charcoal to cook. “I was ...
The United States is entering uncharted waters as a superpower, as it slowly climbs out of a crippling recession and faces an electoral showdown this fall between cautious globalism and a desire to retrench its economy against external competition from emerging third-world dynamos. President ...
What's the Big Idea? Happy International Women's Day! This is the first of many events throughout the month which focus on celebrating the historic achievements of women around the world, while highlighting the injustices of women's continued socio-economic inequality. This morning, Big Think ...
Editor's note: 2011 was a good year for participatory democracy. But as new governments rise to replace old regimes, a pressing need has emerged for strong models on which to build the foundation of a modern society. In this guest post, David Alexander proposes a radical idea: that model should not ...
President Obama has unveiled his proposed 10-year budget today, and while there’s nothing particularly shocking included for those who have been following the ongoing debate between the White House and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the new economic plan for the United States ...
A guest post by Craig McDonald, author of El Gavilan. Cancións, narcocorridos and Americana border ballads: folk songs played out along both sides of an increasingly treacherous expanse of La Frontera. Hard but tuneful tales, some of them quite bloody, told to the strum of guitars, the soulful ...
What's the Big Idea? What will historians say about our time 100 years from now? How will our world be remembered? According to Lawrence Summers, economist and former President of Harvard, a civilization's legacy has more to do with the work of its many teachers and thinkers -- artists ...
What’s the Big Idea? Quick. Grab a pencil. I’ll say a word and you write down the first three things that come to mind. Ready? Manufacturing. I’m betting China was number one. Which is why a recent study by the Boston Consulting Group suggesting that America is set for a “manufacturing ...
