What it actually is, is boring.
How is this possible?
I wonder if this website is simply an old concept hiding behind new drapery. Essentially the premise is, this is where to go for the brainiest new thinking from very intelligent people. That sounds compelling. And yet it is not.
When you think about it, any good magazine is a clearing house of ideas and trends and acute observations; when you Big Think about it, all turns into earnest and academic chuntering on about stuff that might matter but to whom exactly?
A case in point: Why are you a vegan? Oh jeez, do I CARE???
The problem is, I think, and I don't big think, is that these are ideas without the grounding in "why" -- good ideas for most of us, and certainly the most of us that make a website work, become GREAT when they become relevant. Esoteric is merely that; greatness comes in touching the soul, moving the heart, inspiring many other minds to bigger things. Without the grounding an idea is Rapunzel -- something we can see, sometimes, but cannot touch.
I heard about this site from the great NYT, and it was too early for Times to tell if the site was actually GOOD.
In any given issue of said Times, and certainly any issue of the magazine, I am inspired to be more than myself. I'm inspired to think about why 'good' is moral; why those delightful all-accepting totally optimistic souls with Williams Syndrome nonetheless fail to connect; who is really controlling the economy and how. There is a big idea -- blue sky -- and grounding. Perfect earth.
Not so this website.
I believe we are living in a visual age, a casual age, a discombolutated multi-tasking mad-paced dissociated age. We need not just intellect but soul. Ideas and heart.
The idea behind BigThink is big, and beautiful. But it needs to feel as well as think in order to be truly relevant.
That's what I think, anyway.
But don't let me tell you what to think. Check it out for yourself. http://www.bigthink.com/
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