IMO there are two things going on here. The first is that many current Big Ideas are relegated to the sciences, where there is antipathy (as this article suggests), and ignorance, due in part to educational priorities, and in part to the inaccessibility of very specialized ideas. These ideas are ignored. The second has something to do with individualism in the Western world. If the US has a religion, it is that the individual can be a god, the market is the world, and some gods should be worshiped for their exploits and the masses they command. Steve Jobs is Apollo, Sarah Palin is Persephone, Rupert Mudoch is Ares, etc. We worship them. Sometimes they interact with mortals; and some mortals ascend to Olympus. In this religion, ideas that Gabler speaks of have little currency. In fact, due to the considerable effort they represent, they are almost ironic, laughable. A real god can destroy these ideas by sheer will.
The main reason Mr. Gabler's gives for the lack of big ideas today is that there's too information going around. Our brains can't process that much stuff, so we have to settle for just knowing and not thinking about what we know. I don't buy the Information Overload. Walter Benjamin proclaimed it in his essay "The Storyteller", from 1936. But here we are now, 2011, and no one has become schizophrenic or had an epileptic seizure because of the Internet. I agree with Mr. Gabler point that ideas that can't be instantly monetized have little value these days. But I wouldn't fault the advent of the "Age of Information" for that. As mk said, there are powerful, influential people in the world that can eliminate dangerous, big ideas with the stroke of a pen. The concentration of power, not the excess of information, should be the culprit in Mr. Gabler's article. There's also another problem. Mr. Gabler argument is that big ideas nowadays get lost in the white noise of media frenzy. I would argue that big ideas wouldn't show up in these outlets anyway. There exist places other than TIME magazine for thoughtful conversations and big ideas. Sites like TED, Khan Academy and our own little Hubski. Mr. Gabler's article reads less like an objective summary of the present and more like a nostalgic, sad goodbye to the past. And that's fine. But to write that "there won’t be anything we won’t know. But there will be no one thinking about it" is just untrue. Those, for what they're worth, are my thoughts on the matter.
I do think that information has been better commoditized, and that certain themes are artificially maintained for profit. However, like you suggest, Mr. Gabler is probably looking in the wrong places. (http://www.theonion.com/video/time-announces-new-version-of-...) :)