David Passig

Last updated
David Passig
Born1957 (age 6566)
NationalityFrench
Israeli
OccupationFuturist
Known forPredicting September 11 attacks

David Passig (born 1957) is an Israeli futurist. He specializes in technological, social, and educational futures. He is a full professor at the Bar-Ilan University [1] in Israel. He heads the Graduate Program in Information and Communication Technology and the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the Faculty of Education.

Contents

Biography

Passig was born as David Ben-Harosh in Meknes, Morocco, to a Jewish family. As a young child, his family immigrated to France, where he spent his early childhood. When Passig was 11, the family moved to Israel. Passig holds both Portuguese and Israeli nationalities. [2]

In 1982, at age 25, Passig fought in the 1982 Lebanon War, during which many soldiers in his unit died after it was caught in a Syrian ambush and then accidentally attacked by Israeli warplanes. A number of his friends were among the casualties. According to Passig, this caused him to begin thinking heavily about the future, as he wondered whether Israel was fated to constantly fight. When he returned from the army, Passig took a vacation in Europe at the urging of his father. While in Brussels, he visited an exhibit on homes of the future and was intrigued by how the predictions were made. Although he was studying psychology at the time, he decided to enroll in an Anticipatory Anthropology course at the University of Minnesota. [3] He received a PhD in Anticipatory Anthropology (Futures Studies) in 1993.

Passig, an Orthodox Jew, is divorced with four children and lives in Tel Aviv. He works as a Full Professor at the Faculty of Education at Bar-Ilan University, where he heads the university's MA program in information communication technologies in education and its virtual reality laboratory. He also works as a consultant and has advised Fortune 500 companies, science fiction film producers, and some Israeli government institutions, including the Ministry of Education, Bank Hapoalim, and the Israeli Air Force. He served as an adviser to the commissioner for future generations at the Knesset and is a member of the Israeli National Committee for Research and Development. He is a co-founder of Thinkz Ltd, a startup company developing Social IoT platforms and applications.

Predictions

Passig's accurate predictions include the September 11 attacks. In the 1990s, he predicted that a terrorist attack would take place on a major symbol of world order in the early 21st century. Passig also predicted the 2008 financial crisis in 1998, when he said that there would be a global economic crisis that would start in either 2007 or 2008. He wrote about the coming financial crisis in his book The Future Code, which was written in 2006 and published a few months before the crisis started. Passig also accurately forecast major developments in wireless technology, [3] Russia invasion to Ukraine and the Arab Spring.

Among his future predictions include Moore's law ending by 2017, a brain-powered personal computer by 2020, a commercial quantum computer by 2027, laboratory-grown human organs on demand by 2028, a space elevator by 2029, an artificially intelligent computer similar to the fictional HAL 9000 by 2047, an undersea city by 2068, cryonics reanimation by 2085, nanorgasm by 2089, and warp drive by 2095. He has contradicted widespread predictions of human colonization of space in the late 21st and 22nd century, and believes that humanity will not begin to seriously colonize space until the 23rd or 24th century. [2] [3] [4]

A Future Taxonomy of Cognitive skills

Passig has developed a taxonomy of future cognitive and learning skills. [5] This taxonomy attempts to refresh Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive skills to reflect future needs and introduces a new thinking skill called melioration, the ability to solve a problem within one's own area of expertise using a concept from a widely divergent domain. [6] This taxonomy is being taught worldwide at teachers' colleges and MBA programs. [ citation needed ] Passig and colleague Lizi Cohen developed the Innovative Combinations' Test, which attempts to measure melioration, as well as a training program called Thinking-Different. [7]

Imen Delphi

Passig has also developed a future research methodology named "Imen-Delphi" (ID). [8] This methodology aims at structuring a procedure through which a group of experts could invent preferable futures, as opposed to the classical "Delphi" forecasting technique, in which a group of experts is engaged in figuring out the most probable future. He is conducting various case studies to enhance its reliability and validity in helping various groups shaping their future imageries. The following papers represent the ID methodology in the published literature:

Enhancing Cognitive Skills with Virtual Reality

Passig established the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University, and is conducting studies on various aspects of the human user learning interface of virtual reality.[ clarification needed ] His lab is the first in Israel aimed at researching and teaching virtual reality in education.

He is also studying the impact of ICT interfaces on various aspects of human cognition and social behavior as well as learning processes. Passig suggests that ICT interfaces have an unexpected impact on the user's awareness of a variety of cognitive phenomena,[ clarification needed ] and that VR can enhance some cognitive skills. The following papers represent this ongoing endeavor:

Books

Related Research Articles

Bloom's taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used for classification of educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. The three lists cover the learning objectives in cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains. The cognitive domain list has been the primary focus of most traditional education and is frequently used to structure curriculum learning objectives, assessments and activities.

The Delphi method or Delphi technique is a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The technique can also be adapted for use in face-to-face meetings, and is then called mini-Delphi. Delphi has been widely used for business forecasting and has certain advantages over another structured forecasting approach, prediction markets.

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References

  1. "אוניברסיטת בר אילן". www.biu.ac.il.
  2. 1 2 What does the future hold in store? - Israel21c.org
  3. 1 2 3 Rosenblatt, Gary (14 May 2013). "Israel: Don't Overreach". jewishweek.timesofisrael.com.
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-10-27. Retrieved 2013-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Passig, David (2001) A taxonomy of ICT mediated future thinking skills. In Taylor, H. and Hogenbirk, P. (2001) Information and Communication Technologies in Education: The School of the Future. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, pp 103–112.
  6. Passig, David (2007) Melioration as a Higher Thinking Skill to Enhance Future Intelligence. Teachers College Record. Columbia University. 109 (1), 24–50.
  7. Passig, D. & Cohen, L. (2006) Innovative Combinations: A Tool for Measuring the Melioration Skill. Teachers College Record. Research Note. Date Published: October 9, 2006 Teachers College Record ID Number: 12776.
  8. Passig, David (1997) Imen Delphi: A Delphi Variant Procedure for Emergence. Human Organization. Journal of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Southern Methodist University. Dallas, TX. Spring, 56(1), 53–63.