TED Fellow Anab Jain imagines and builds future worlds we can experience in the present moment. By creating new ways of seeing, being and acting, she inspires and challenges us to look critically at the decisions and choices we make today.
Why you should listen
We live in extraordinary times, concurrently breathtaking and deeply precarious. Anab Jain co-founded the vanguard laboratory, design and film studio Superflux with Jon Ardern to parse uncertainties around our shared futures. She creates tangible, provocative experiences that transport people directly into possible future worlds. Through her work, Jain has discovered a powerful means of affecting change; by confronting and emotionally connecting people with future consequences in the present.
From climate change and growing inequality, to the emergence of artificial intelligence and the future of work, Jain and her team explore some of the biggest challenges of our times -- and investigate the potential and unintended consequences of these challenges.
Superflux is currently developing tools and strategies that can enable us to mitigate the shock of food insecurity and climate change. Recently, they produced a series of civilian drones -- creating a vision of a near-future city where these intelligent machines begin to display increasing autonomy within civic society.
Jain is also Professor of Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where she is currently curating the "How Will We Work" show for the Vienna Biennale, and she is a TED Fellow. Her work has won awards at UNESCO, Apple Inc., Geneva Human Rights Film Festival, Innovate UK, and exhibited at MoMA New York, V&A London, National Museum of China, Vitra Design Museum and Tate Modern.
What others say
I think Anab’s legacy will be a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at the world. That’s very exciting.
Anab Jain’s TED Talks
More news and ideas from Anab Jain
Arts + Design
An unsettling peek into the reality of life in 2050
December 19, 2017
Rather than just imagine the future, what if we could walk around in it? In an installation, designer Anab Jain invites visitors to enter an apartment in the middle of the 21st century.
Continue readingLive from TED2017
One move ahead: The talks of Session 1 of TED2017
April 25, 2017
TED2017 begins with a manifesto: “We will not sleepwalk into a future of dread. Instead we will pursue: courage, deep human connection, imagination, thrilling possibility, understanding. The Future You is yet to be written. Let’s write it together.” In a comprehensive opening session — hosted by TED’s Head Curator, Chris Anderson, and streamed live to 800 […]
Continue readingTED Fellows
Synthetic bees, prosthetic eyes: Fellows Friday with Anab Jain
October 14, 2011
Anab Jain’s design studio Superflux envisions a future where the blind are given ultraviolet vision and invasive species are engineered to combat the effects of climate change. She shares her perspective on our not-too-distant future. How would you describe the work that you do at your revolutionary design studio Superflux? We are living in extremely uncertain […]
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