Innovation

Innovation

A woman with straight black hair, wearing a black turtleneck, poses against a blue-to-white gradient background.
There are two sides to the AI debate, and both are perpetuating the idea that AI is “inevitable, all-powerful, and deserves to be controlled by a tiny group of people,” says the Empire of AI author.
Arianna Huffington, in a maroon dress, sits holding a microphone and smiling in front of a light grey and white background.
The HuffPost co-founder is now focusing on AI and health — but she’s keeping an eye on agency and human nature.
Book cover titled "The Bonfire Moment" with a diagonal gradient line, inspired by Bob Taylor’s collaborative spirit, and text: "Bring Your Team Together To Solve The Hardest Problems Startups Face" by Martin Gonzalez & Josh Yellin.
Tech legend Bob Taylor — a pioneer of the computing revolution — figured out the genius of framing two types of disagreement.
A person wearing a light-colored cloak stands in a dense, green forest, surrounded by tall trees and moss-covered ground—an ideal setting for quiet reflection and systems thinking.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Tim O'Reilly, an older man with short gray hair wearing a light blue button-up shirt, stands outdoors with arms crossed, surrounded by green trees.
Media trailblazer Tim O’Reilly tells Big Think why AI requires "get yourself dirty" work — and warns us not to buy the hype.
Two side-by-side images of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula showcase different views with vibrant colors and star-filled backgrounds, embodying the great paradox of beauty within science.
There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe?
A sequence of four orange and black butterflies in motion, captured against a black background, their blurred wings a graceful display of butterfly wisdom in flight.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Three men in business attire and jackets stand before a collage background, featuring downward-trending graph lines on green paper, each displaying a CEO superpower as they navigate challenging markets.
From Charles Schwab to Jensen Huang, great leaders never attribute their success to flawless planning — they point instead to what went wrong.
A split image shows a person typing on a laptop on the left and gridlocked cars on the right, set against connected nodes and letters—a visual nod to Jack Nilles, pioneer of telecommuting.
Decades before COVID imposed remote work on the world, Jack Nilles pioneered WFH and championed its many benefits.
Abstract collage with network nodes, a vintage gear, a textured gray circle, and green gears on a graph background, divided into four colored quadrants.
An introduction to "The Engine of Progress" from Jason Crawford, founder of the Roots of Progress Institute.
Illustration of a person using a telescope among large stacks of paper, with red graph-like squares in the background.
Real progress demands rules built for uncertainty — not for the few innovations dominating today’s tech landscape.
A rocket launches above layered geometric shapes depicting clouds, a building, and a crowd, all set against a black grid background.
Before we can build the future, we have to imagine it.
An illustration of a Roman-style ruin labeled "Common Law" is overlaid with concentric semicircles labeled Industrial Revolution, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative Models.
Common law has long balanced innovation and accountability. Can it do the same for AI?
Five books are displayed upright in a row: "Gödel, Escher, Bach," "Man’s Search for Meaning," "Red Mars," "The Road to Reality," and "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
These expert-recommended books reveal how big ideas can shape — and sometimes redefine — human progress.
Two men sit on outdoor chairs holding microphones, engaged in conversation at an event. A conference sign is visible in the background.
To turn technical breakthroughs into real-world change, AI must overcome the friction of politics, policy, and human institutions.
Two women stand and speak in front of a projector screen displaying a graph titled "YIMBY Action’s Ladder of Engagement" at a presentation or workshop.
To build a better world, we first have to understand how change actually happens.
A man holding a microphone speaks to an audience in front of a bookshelf and a display with logos, including "Roots of Progress Institute" and "Big Think.
At the foundation of America’s progress movement are immigrants who still believe this country can build.
Two people sit in wicker chairs outdoors, holding microphones and having a conversation about energy abundance. Other people are visible in the blurred background.
Barriers to energy abundance — and how to overcome them — were front and center at Progress Conference 2025.
An older man with gray hair and glasses speaks into a microphone, gesturing with one hand, against a green and grid-patterned background.
With new labs, funding models, and institutions, metascience is reinventing the machinery of discovery.
A collage featuring vintage documents, a grayscale moon map with labeled lunar missions, colored dots, and an old astronomical chart on a black background.
Government-spec’d glory projects produce tech demos. Enduring progress demands a better way forward.
A grid of twelve black-and-white icons representing various scientific fields, with “Artificial Intelligence” highlighted in red under a polygonal brain illustration.
The case that a bipartisan movement structured around progress and reform may be reaching critical mass.
Book cover titled "Machine Decision Is Not Final: China and the History and Future of AI," highlighting the evolution of AI China, with editor and contributor names listed in English and Chinese.
Leaders in China hope that AI and robotics can finally resolve the flaws of a centralized planned economy. But US technoculture has an edge.
Collage with red and gray tones shows a hand writing in a notebook, crumpled paper, an iceberg, and the text “The Nightcrawler” at the top—capturing a mood of long thinking and creative struggle.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
A woman displays stoicism as she grimaces, unfazed by a pancake landing on her head while holding a frying pan in a kitchen setting.
Ryan Holiday on why wisdom depends on failure, experimentation, and the courage to admit when we’re wrong.
Book cover featuring Phil Gilbert’s “Irresistible Change,” with the subtitle “A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success,” set against a black background with bold red and gray blocks.
The greatest companies navigate change at speed and make it stick at scale. Here’s how IBM started that journey in 2012.
A bald man in a blue suit and white shirt stands outdoors in Silicon Oasis, smiling, with autumn leaves and a blurred building in the background.
We chat with Mark Klarzynski, founder of PEAK:AIO, on how his company became an international player in data storage for the age of AI.
A wavy line, one meter long, transitions from dark red to bright yellow above a ruler, set against a magenta oval with a blue background featuring drawn human figures.
Until the late 20th century, there wasn't a truly universal standard. Under our current definition, everyone agrees on what "one meter" is.
A grayscale portrait of a smiling man is overlaid on classical artwork with pink and black graphic elements, evoking a sense of desire. The text at the top reads "THE NIGHT CRAWLER.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
terraforming
The first world beyond Earth for human habitability should be the Moon, not Mars. This is why we should terraform our lunar neighbor first.