Israeli professor uses hard science to predict the future

Is David Passig a modern-day prophet?

He says no, even though he comes from the land of Canaan and foretells the future. Rather, he is a man of science, describing the world to come.

A professor of future studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, Passig uses modern science to peer into the next 100 years. He says his field –– a respected academic discipline since the 1930s — so far has about a 70 percent success rate in accurately predicting the future.

David Passig photo/yasmin vahdatpour

“It always amazes me that people are not aware of the discipline,” said Passig, who had a couple of small speaking engagements during a pleasure trip to the Bay Area recently. “Most people don’t believe there is a way to study the future. You can imagine, predict, prophesize — but studying it in an academic way? That makes people confused.”

The science involved is multi-disciplinary. It is achieved by tabulating statistics in economics, politics, technology and other fields. By cross-matching the evolution of trends in previous eras, Passig and his fellow futurists make predictions with a high degree of confidence.

For example, as far back as 1998, he was predicting in media interviews that there would be a global economic crash in 2007 or 2008. And in the early 1990s, he wrote that there would be an early 21st-century terrorist attack against “a symbol of the world order.”

One of Passig’s specialties is technology, and more than 15 years ago he was predicting major developments in wireless technology. Now, based on trends he studies closely, he expects we will see a brain-powered personal computer by 2020, lab-grown human organs on demand by 2028, an undersea city by 2068 and cryonics reanimation by 2085.

If that’s not enough bravado for a brave new world, he also forecasts the global Jewish population to rise from some 12 million today to 18 million by 2050. Some of his estimates jump that figure to 22 million.

Those who worry about the survival of the Jewish state, fear not: According to the futurist, Israel will be very much alive and kicking in 2050, with a Jewish population (currently 5.7 million) shooting into the neighborhood of 13 million to 15 million.

“People don’t see the larger picture,” he said, dismissing deligitimization efforts, such as the boycott-divestment-sanctions campaign against Israel, and even threats from its Arab neighbors, as “noise.”

“Israel has enough leverage to overcome all those things,” he added. “Three years ago the largest Jewish community shifted [from the United States] to Israel, about

6 million. The mega-trends are in the making, and nobody is paying attention.”

He does caution that a “wild card” is possible, anything from climate change disaster to an Iranian nuclear attack. But, he asserted, “If you take the probable trends, then you can say with about 70 percent reliability the [population] numbers will be correct by 2050.”

It’s not all flowers and candy, though. Passig also believes Israel will someday invade and occupy Syria, after that nation and its Hezbollah allies launch a major offensive against Israel. He also expects that tensions between the United States and Russia will eventually reach a boiling point, with armed conflict a distinct possibility.

But not even those prospects get him down, especially when he contemplates the future of the Jewish people.

“We are just at the beginning stage of recovery from the Holocaust,” he said. “This is what’s going to change history. The history of the Jewish people in the coming century is going to be very different from the last few millennia.”

Passig traces his interest in future studies to a day in the early 1980s when as a young psychology student, he noticed an exhibition hall in Brussels advertising “The Home of the Future.”

Inside he saw prototypes of LED flat screens and something called the Internet.

Passig, a father of four who lives in Netanya, left his native Israel to earn a Ph.D. in anticipatory anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Today he teaches future studies at the graduate school of education at Bar-Ilan, where he also spearheads a graduate program in information and communication technologies.

He lectures all over the world, is a consultant to governments and businesses, and his 2008 book “The Future Code” remained on the Israeli best-seller list for 25 weeks. Last year he published another book, “2048.”

Passig takes the long view of human history, and based on migration patterns that have led to a density of 600 people per square kilometer in Asia, he is predicting much tension in the future.

“The world is not balanced in terms of demography,” he said. “What we will see in the next 500 years is waves of immigration to the New World for balance. During the last 5,000 years, the major conflicts and religions were shaped because of that movement of population. The effort to stopping it is what made human history.”

Despite all the war, strife and suffering, Passig is upbeat about humanity’s future, including the Jewish people. Humanity’s only potential impediment: humanity.

“We are just beginning to understand things,” he said. “We are like kids, who don’t see anything beyond their toys. We are a very young species. But what’s 100,000 years? It’s barely the blink of an eye.”