The Future of Big Ideas | Michael Bhaskar (Writer & Publisher) | TEDxGateway

Michael Bhaskar @michaelbhaskar (Writer & Publisher) in conversation with Jonathan Rives (Poet and Storyteller) The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers—from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory.

And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally—recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative talk, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future. 

Two things could be sparking a Great Acceleration in new thinking and technology. First, new tools and techniques from AI to synthetic biology are starting to come on-stream, spurred on by the pandemic. Secondly, for the first time in history, the whole world is converging at the frontiers of knowledge, with every nation pushing forward the boundaries. This is a unique time, and this talk will make clear why.