Technology & Innovation

By 2030, the world’s population will require 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water. We need sustainable development not in spite of the crisis but because of it.

Robotics companies are teaming up with health care providers to innovate how patients receive care. Medicine is the next arena about to undergo an information revolution.

If you are looking to start a business after graduating college, but want to continue your education first, choosing an engineering degree over an MBA may be the wiser decision.

Are you ready to pay $19 per month, without a contract, for mobile phone service? That is what a new start up is offering by switching between WiFi and a standard carrier network.

While Newt Gingrich may have lost the Florida primary, he has been quick to inspire the popular imagination. But just how out there is his idea for a permanent American moon base?

New software is turning surveillance cameras into a wealth of consumer behavior data. By tracking customer flow throughout the day, shops can better understand what their clients want.

Facebook could become a publicly traded company as early as Wednesday, possibly generating $10 billion in cash and reaching a value of $100 billion. That’s a lot of advertising revenue.

A new version of a dating website run by Sean Mills, former president of the Onion, wants to take the weirdness out of online matchmaking by emphasizing real-time social networking.  

On Thursday, Twitter posted a new censorship policy, stating that it will now have the ability to “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it […]

To sustain economic growth, the Communist party’s top priority, domestic consumption must increase. That means giving people more power over their own money, i.e. market liberalization.

Increases in government spending, reflected by the ballooning global debt, have only papered over a serious structural problem in the economies of industrial democracies.

Canada’s system of community colleges is better preparing students to find jobs in careers that interest them. The schools are more nimble, responding to industry demand to train workers.

At a time when the legal status of the corporate corpus is the subject of intense political debate, organizational entrepreneur Brian Robertson maintains that businesses aren’t acting human enough.

Figures like Bill Clinton and Arianna Huffington have spoken publicly about the deteriorating effects of sleep loss in our personal, political and work lives. When will we learn to rest well?

Watch an extended version of our interview with Lynda Weinman, co-founder of Lynda.com: What’s the Big Idea? Lynda Weinman quite literally wrote the book on web design. She was 28 […]

At the New York Times’ “Schools for Tomorrow” conference, Larry Summers expressed his disappointment with our education system. The former Harvard President argued that, “The world is changing very rapidly… […]

Today’s high-end computer chips typically hold 16 processors, or cores, but MIT engineer and entrepreneur Anant Agarwal has created one with for 100. He is aiming for a 1,000 core chip.

It’s unusual for a website to charge for its services, admits Lynda Weinman, but the fee “allows us to have a sustainable business model where we can pay contributors.” Her approach represents a compromise between the open ideals of the web and the financial needs of the people who fill its pages.

What kind of insurance does a self-driving car need? Can a police officer pull one over? While technological challenges to the new autos are being overcome, legal ones remain far from resolved.

Besides the entertainment companies that rely on pirating statistics to advertise, illegal downloading can only be curbed by sensible legal alternatives that make files more accessible.

Many of the physical spaces occupied by our institutions—office buildings, universities, shopping malls—are nothing more than low-bandwidth information transfer. Say goodbye to them.

The crisis of liberal capitalism has been made more serious by the rise of a potent alternative: state capitalism, which tries to meld the powers of the state with the powers of capitalism.

Deficit reduction in a depressed economy is the road not to recovery, but to contraction, says British political economist Robert Skidelsky. He argues that current efforts to repay debt are misguided.

Or at least that’s what men seem to think. An economic survey shows how rates of personal debt increase in areas where men outnumber women, making the competition for a mate more fierce.

Can the comedian’s critique of campaign finance make a difference or is it too easily dismissed as comedy? Today, Colbert urged South Carolina to vote for Herman Cain, who is no longer running.

The customer service benefits to using Twitter have become apparent to companies large and small. Michele Obama and Rupert Murdoch are the latest individuals to fire off tweets.

What’s the Big Idea? Big Think co-founder Peter Hopkins is fond of thinking against the grain, and when it comes to the current debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act […]

Need a little extra cash and want to make money doing something you love? Here are fives simple businesses you can start on the side and let grow while you keep up with your other life.

Today, Apple announced its new e-book software. Stanford and MIT are offering its courses online—and for free. It looks like the information revolution is about to change education as we know it.

Skype programmer Jaan Tallinn isn’t so sure we’ll ever be able to build networks that can replicate– even in a business context – the communicative power of meeting in person. Instead, he believes, we’ll continue to edge asymptotically closer.