Big Thinkers is a former ZDTV (later TechTV

TechTV

TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming...

) television program. It featured a half-hour interview with a "big thinker" in science, technology, and other fields. The show was originally hosted by Mark Eddo, later replaced by John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak

John C. Dvorak is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a mainstay of a variety of magazines. Dvorak is also the Vice-President of Mevio and well known for his work for Tech TV...

. In 2001 the show changed its format, transforming from a weekly half-hour interview to a documentary-style program. This new format was initially referred to on the TechTV

TechTV

TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming...

 website as Big Thinkers 2.0.

The new incarnation of the Big Thinkers series was produced by Winton / duPont Films, a documentary film company located in the Presidio of San Francisco

Presidio of San Francisco

The Presidio of San Francisco is a park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area...

. Interviews were filmed in a 16:9

16:9

16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...

 format and intercut with public domain material from the Prelinger Archives

Prelinger Archives

The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history...

. This archival footage (mostly film clips from the 1940s and 50's) was used to create visual metaphors highlighting the speaker's points.

Individuals featured on Big Thinkers 2.0

• Scott Adams
  Scott Adams
  Scott Raymond Adams is the American creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, business, and general speculation....
  
   - cartoonist
• Douglas Adams
  Douglas Adams
  Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
  
   - author
• Ralph Merkle
  Ralph Merkle
  Ralph C. Merkle is a researcher in public key cryptography, and more recently a researcher and speaker on molecular nanotechnology and cryonics...
  
   - nanotechnology researcher
• Jaron Lanier
  Jaron Lanier
  Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality .A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves...
  
   - virtual reality pioneer
• Ian Wilmut
  Ian Wilmut
  Sir Ian Wilmut, OBE FRS FMedSci FRSE is an English embryologist and is currently Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known as the leader of the research group that in 1996 first cloned a mammal from an adult somatic...
  
   - embryologist
• David Gelernter
  David Gelernter
  David Hillel Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University. In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system...
  
   - professor of computer science
• Stewart Brand
  Stewart Brand
  Stewart Brand is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation...
  
   - founder of the Long Now Foundation
• Lawrence Lessig
  Lawrence Lessig
  Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...
  
   - law professor
• Neil Spiller - architect
• Sherry Turkle
  Sherry Turkle
  Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a sociologist...
  
   - psychologist
• James Lovelock
  James Lovelock
  James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...
  
   - independent scientist
• Robert Langer - biotechnology researcher
• Rodney Brooks
  Rodney Brooks
  Rodney Allen Brooks is the former Panasonic professor of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1986 he has authored a series of highly influential papers which have inaugurated a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence research...
  
   - robotics researcher
• Jack Horner
  Jack Horner (paleontologist)
  John "Jack" R. Horner is an American paleontologist who discovered and named Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young. He is one of the best-known paleontologists in the United States...
  
   - paleontologist
• Daniel Dennett
  Daniel Dennett
  Daniel Clement Dennett is an American philosopher, writer and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science. He is currently the Co-director of...
  
   - philosopher
• Michio Kaku
  Michio Kaku
  is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, the co-founder of string field theory, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science...
  
   - theoretical physicist
• Alvin Toffler
  Alvin Toffler
  Alvin Toffler is an American writer and futurist, known for his works discussing the digital revolution, communication revolution, corporate revolution and technological singularity....
  
   - futurist
• Tom Kelley - General Manager of IDEO
  IDEO
  IDEO is an international design and innovation consultancy founded in Palo Alto, California, United States with other locations in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, London, Munich, Shanghai, and Singapore, as well as Mumbai, Seoul, and Tokyo. The company helps design products, services,...
  
  
• Steve Jones
  Steve Jones (biologist)
  John Stephen Jones is a Welsh geneticist and from 1995 to 1999 and 2008 to June 2010 was Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His studies are conducted in the Galton Laboratory. He is also a television presenter and a prize-winning author on...
  
   - biologist
• Tod Machover
  Tod Machover
  Tod Machover , is a composer and an innovator in the application of technology in music. He is the son of Wilma Machover, a pianist and Carl Machover, a computer scientist....
  
   - musician
• Dean Kamen
  Dean Kamen
  Dean L. Kamen is an American entrepreneur and inventor from New Hampshire.Born in Rockville Centre, New York, he attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but dropped out before graduating after five years of private advanced research for drug infusion pump AutoSyringe...
  
   - inventor
• Michael Powell
  Michael Powell (politician)
  Michael Kevin Powell is an American Republican politician and lobbyist. He is the incoming president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association . He was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Bill Clinton on 3 November 1997. President George W. Bush designated...
  
   - politician (former FCC Chairman)
• Penn Fraser Jillette - entertainer