David Passig

David Passig (born 1957) is an Israeli futurist. He specializes in technological futures, as well as social and educational futures. He is an associate 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 School of Education.

David Passig
Born1957 (age 63–64)
Meknes, Morocco
NationalityFrench
Israeli
OccupationFuturist
Known forPredicting September 11 attacks

Biography

Passig was born 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 dual French and Israeli nationality.[2]

In 1982, at age 25, Passig fought in the 1982 Lebanon War. During the war, his army unit was ambushed by Syrian troops, and was later mistakenly attacked by Israeli warplanes, and sustained heavy casualties, including some of his friends. According to Passig, it was during this time that his interest in the future started, as he began wondering whether Israel's fate would be to be in a constant state of war. When he returned from the army, Passig took a vacation to Europe at the urging of his father. While in Brussels, he visited an exhibit on homes of the future. 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 in 1993.

Passig, an observant Orthodox Jew, is divorced with four children and lives in Netanya. He works as a senior lecturer 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 Israeli government institutions, including the Ministry of Education, Bank Hapoalim, and the Israeli Air Force. He served as an adviser to the commissioner for generations at the Knesset and is a member of the Israeli National Committee for Research and Development.

Predictions

Among Passig's accurate predictions were 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 forecasted major developments in wireless technology.[3]

Among his future predictions are space advertising by 2015, 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

He has developed a Taxonomy of Future Cognitive and Learning Skills. This Taxonomy attempts to refresh Blooms taxonomy of cognitive skills to reflect future needs. It also suggests a new thinking skill that was not included in Bloom's categories—named Melioration. It is assumed that this skill will be much required from the alumni of the schooling system in the future. This Taxonomy is being taught worldwide at teachers' colleges and MBA programs. He is developing tools with which one can measure the skill and develop it as well. The following papers represent the taxonomy of cognitive skill that he has published:

  • Passig, David (2007) Melioration as a Higher Thinking Skill to Enhance Future Intelligence. Teachers College Record. Columbia University. 109 (1), 24–50.
  • Passig, D. & Cohen, L. (2006) Innovative Combinations: A Tool for Measuring the Melioration Skill. Teachers College Record. Research Note. Date Published: October 9, 2006 http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12776.
  • 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.

Imen Delphi

He has also developed a Future's Research methodology named "Imen-Delphi" (ID). This methodology reflects a new paradigm in Futures' Thinking. The ID aims at structuring a procedure through which a group of experts could invent preferable futures, as opposed to the classical "Delphi" forecasting technique with 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:

  • Passig, David & Sharbat, Aviva (2000) Electronic-Imen-Delphi (EID): An Online Conferencing Procedure. Education Media International (EMI). The official Journal of the International Council for Educational Media (ICEM) 37(1), 58–67. Routledge.
  • Passig, David (1998). An applied Social Systems Procedure for Generating Purposive Sound Futures. Systems Research and Behavioral Science. The Official Journal of the International Federation for Systems Research. Winter 15(1), 315–325. Wiley & Sons. England.
  • 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.

Enhancing Cognitive Skills with Virtual Reality

He has established the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the School of Ed, and he is conducting studies on various aspects of the Human User Learning Interface of Virtual Reality. His Lab is the first Lab in Israel aimed at researching and teaching Virtual Reality in Education.

He is studying also the impact of ICT interfaces on a variety of human cognitive and social aspects as well as learning processes. He is suggesting that ICT interfaces are having unexpected impact on the users awareness to a variety of cognitive phenomena. He is also suggesting that VR can enhance some cognitive skills. The following papers represent this ongoing endeavor:

  • Eden, S. and Passig, D. (2007) Three-Dimensionality as an effective mode of Representation for Expressing Sequential Time Perception. Journal of Educational Computing Research. 36(1), 51–63.
  • Passig, David, Klein, Pnina & Neuman, Talia (2001) Awareness to Toddlers’ Initial Cognitive Experiences with Virtual Reality. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 17(4), 332–344.
  • Passig, David and Levin, Haya (2000). Gender Preferences for Multimedia Interfaces. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. 16(1), 64–71. Blackwell Science.
  • Passig, David & Eden, Sigal (2000) Enhancing the Induction Skill of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children with Virtual Reality Technology. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. 5(3), 277–285. Oxford University Press.
  • Passig, David and Eden, Sigal (2000) Improving the Flexible Thinking in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children with Virtual Reality Technology. American Annals of the Deaf. 145(3), 286–291.

Books
  • 1. Passig, David (2008) The Future Code: Israel's Future-Test. Tel Aviv, Yediot Press (in Hebrew). Publisher's site of the book Book received the Gold Prize. 16 predictions about Israel in four categories: Social, national security, economics and national identity.
  • 2. Passig, David (2010) 2048. Tel Aviv, Yediot Press (in Hebrew). Publisher's site of the book Possible conflicts of the 21st century, the technologies that will drive these confrontations and how they will be reflected in the Middle east up to the mid 21st century.
  • 3. Passig, David (2011). Iki Bin Elli. Coton Kitap Publication: Istanbul. Turkish translation of 2048, renamed 2050. Turkish Publisher
  • 4. Passig, David (2013). 2048. Tel Aviv: Yediot Press. English translation.
  • 5. Passig, David (2013). Forecognito — the Future Mind. Tel Aviv: Yediot Press. Hebrew. Publisher's site of the book the neurophysiological mechanusm of Futures Thinking. He suggests that the mind is in the midst of an accelerated evolutionary process in which a variety of cognitive skills are enhanced. Includes a meta analysis of studies regarding the way to enhance a variety of IQ skills with Virtual Reality.

References
  1. BIU
  2. What does the future hold in store? - Israel21c.org
  3. Israel: Don't Overreach
  4. http://www.passig.com/vault/presentations/banner2.swf
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