What if you could experience a story with your entire body, not just with your mind? Nonny de la Peña is working on a new form of journalism that combines traditional reporting with emerging virtual reality technology to put the audience inside the story. The result is an evocative experience that de la Peña hopes will help people understand the...

Witness technology’s transformation over the past decade, and the astounding ways we’ll interact with reality in the future.

Using low-cost virtual reality, education activist Jessica Ochoa Hendrix helps bring science to life in schools across the US. In this quick talk, she explains how a VR experience she developed invites students to explore underwater ecosystems as if they're marine biologists -- and envision themselves in other careers they might not have otherwi...

Traveling is tricky right now and, for most, the boundaries of our worlds have shrunk dramatically. So a lot of people are spending a lot more time in virtual places, like Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, Ultima Online and more. Explore how these online worlds help us push past real-world boundaries and have vastly new experiences, even become new vers...

Chris Milk uses cutting edge technology to produce astonishing films that delight and enchant. But for Milk, the human story is the driving force behind everything he does. In this short, charming talk, he shows some of his collaborations with musicians including Kanye West and Arcade Fire, and describes his latest, mind-bending experiments with...

Higher education remains rooted in rigid, traditional structures and tracks -- and it's at risk of getting left behind in favor of expanded access, greater flexibility and tailored learning. Educator Tyler DeWitt explains how innovations in digital content and virtual reality are ushering in the future of learning, emphasizing why academia must ...

Chris Milk uses innovative technologies to make personal, interactive, human stories. Accompanied by Joshua Roman on cello and McKenzie Stubbert on piano, Milk traces his relationship to music and art -- from the first moment he remembers putting on headphones to his current work creating breakthrough virtual reality projects. VR is the last med...

Glenn Cantave uses technology to highlight narratives of the oppressed. In a tour of immersive visual projects, he shares his work with the team at Movers and Shakers NYC, a coalition that executes direct action and advocacy campaigns for marginalized communities using virtual reality, augmented reality and the creative arts.

In this passionate talk, activist and entrepreneur Glenn Cantave shares how he and his team use technology to amplify the narratives of marginalized communities using virtual and augmented reality.

What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future,...

Chris Kluwe wants to look into the future of sports and think about how technology will help not just players and coaches, but fans. Here the former NFL punter envisions a future in which augmented reality will help people experience sports as if they are directly on the field -- and maybe even help them see others in a new light, too.

Microsoft's Stephen Lawler gives a whirlwind tour of Virtual Earth, moving up, down and through its hyper-real cityscapes with dazzlingly fluidity, a remarkable feat that requires staggering amounts of data to bring into focus.

When you think of telecommuting, you might think of a remote colleague's face in a tiny square on a screen. But with Jinha Lee's augmented reality platform, Spatial, distant coworkers can now teleport as digital avatars into a shared virtual space. Check out the incredible potential and possibilities for colleagues on different continents or in ...

Virtual reality is no longer part of some distant future, and it's not just for gaming and entertainment anymore. Michael Bodekaer wants to use it to make quality education more accessible. In this refreshing talk, he demos an idea that could revolutionize the way we teach science in schools.

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

Composer and conductor Eric Whitacre has inspired millions by bringing together "virtual choirs," singers from many countries spliced together on video. Now, for the first time ever, he creates the experience in real time, as 32 singers from around the world Skype in to join an onstage choir (assembled from three local colleges) for an epic perf...

Medical scans can produce thousands of images for a single patient in seconds, but how do doctors know what's useful? Scientific visualization expert Anders Ynnerman shows us sophisticated new tools -- like virtual autopsies -- for analyzing our data, and hints at the sci-fi-sounding medical technologies coming up next. This talk contains some g...

Get ready to have your mind blown by the best science and tech talks to hit the TED stage in 2016.

Jaron Lanier is a scientist, musician and writer best known for his work in virtual reality and his advocacy of humanism and sustainable economics in a digital context.

Why build a virtual world? Philip Rosedale talks about the virtual society he founded, Second Life, and its underpinnings in human creativity. It's a place so different that anything could happen.

In a moving and madly viral video last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir of singers from around the world. He talks through the creative challenges of making music powered by YouTube, and unveils the first 2 minutes of his new work, "Sleep," with a video choir of 2,052. The full piece premiered a few weeks later (yes, on YouTube!).

Fasten your seat belt as software engineer Alex Koster takes us on a journey in what he calls the "software dream car" of the future. He breaks down how massive technological shifts are transforming the automotive industry and paints a vivid picture of where cars are headed -- from AI drivers to interiors and exteriors shaped by augmented and vi...

Experiential artist Lucas Rizzotto was going through a tough breakup, so he did what anyone would do: he built a personal time machine. In a playful talk, he shares how his free-ranging experimentation led to various delightful, unexpected innovations that are changing how people think about the relationship between technology and art. "Technolo...

Nitish Padmanaban designs systems that combine optics and computation to help improve visual perception.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas leads a dazzling demo of Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos culled from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them.

The border between our physical world and the digital information surrounding us has been getting thinner and thinner. Designer and engineer Jinha Lee wants to dissolve it altogether. As he demonstrates in this short, gasp-inducing talk, his ideas include a pen that penetrates into a screen to draw 3D models and SpaceTop, a computer desktop prot...

Torsten Reil talks about how the study of biology can help make natural-looking animated people -- by building a human from the inside out, with bones, muscles and a nervous system. He spoke at TED in 2003; see his work now in GTA4.

Nonny de la Peña uses new, immersive media to tell stories that create empathy in readers and viewers.

Working at the frontiers of interactive technology, Chris Milk stretches virtual reality into a new canvas for storytelling.

Anna Piperal is a branding expert and digital enthusiast who strives to spread the idea of a "zero-bureaucracy" government ecosystem.