"The most successful will be those who have the courage to imagine the most extreme future and prepare services and products for it such as an elevator that goes up in zig zags," said futurist David Pasig at the Bint Expo conference
Dr. David Passig
The field of futurism or "futures studies" began to develop in an institutionalized way during World War II, when armies were asked to plan "five-year plans". When they started thinking five years ahead, it became clear that the human race does not have tools with which to think about the future.
Those engaged in "futures research" try to examine how it is possible to influence the various futures in the fields of technology, economics, demography and industry with the help of different methodologies for future research. The working assumption of future research is that the existence of evolution presupposes a logic for evolution. Therefore, many researchers in the field seek to find or identify the logic patterns of the various systems and develop development models as a result. With the help of these models, it is possible to help organizations and describe to them what the next steps in the system will be.
The methodologies of future research can be divided into two main categories:
1. Trends that have already been born - in 99.9 percent of the predictions we hear about, these are things that were already born five, ten and twenty years ago, and the futurists try to explain the consequences of these trends years ahead.
2. Trends that are in the embryo - trends that have not yet been born, but can be noticed.
An important role in futures research is the ability to identify "strategic surprises". To do so, one must try and identify the force driving the change and not the change itself. That is, the dynamics of change. The ability to detect this movement allows far-reaching predictions to be made. For example, ten years ago far-reaching forecasts were made in the field of the economy. Then they were dismissed, while today, ten years later, it turns out that the reliability and validity of these predictions were high. In the early nineties, the economist Harry Dent asked himself, how can the driving force of economic growth be identified? Based on a theory developed in the sixties, he wanted to make economic forecasts ten years ahead. It was based on the idea that the driving force for growth is consumption. Dennett recognized that each of us goes through four cycles of consumption in our lives. Therefore, in order to make an economic forecast, the population in any country must be analyzed according to the waves of consumption and examine how it is spread over the various waves.
The first wave of consumption in our life cycle, which he calls the "birth wave", occurs from the moment we are born until the age of 24, so we consume quite a few things, but not our money. The second wave, which he calls the "entrepreneurial wave", takes place between the years 34-25 when we make a lot of expenses, with the stated goal that when the time comes, these expenses will give greater income. The third wave, which he calls the "spending wave", occurs when we are between the ages of 35-44, when we make the biggest expenses of our lives. The fourth wave, which he calls the "organization wave", is the wave in which we save for later days. According to me, a fifth wave should be added that Dent did not refer to, and that is the "retirement wave".
Dent performed this test on the American population in the early 94s and identified that from about 2005, until about 80, the age group that is in the third wave (the spending wave) in the USA will be the largest age group (about 88 million people), in relation to all groups the other ages. Therefore, in the early nineties, when there was a very severe recession in the USA (93' to 30'), Dent claimed that the American economy was going to go through a long and deep growth. Dent also recognized that the age group of the second wave (the entrepreneurship wave) currently in the US is the smallest age group in the American population (about 2004 million people), and it will enter the spending wave from about XNUMX. He therefore claims today that the US is about to enter one The hardest and deepest recessions she had.
When we come to test this theory about the population of the State of Israel, we must examine the distribution of the population over the waves. The wave of retirees is becoming almost 10 percent of the Israeli population and this is an economic force that needs to be taken into account. The smallest age group in the State of Israel today, this is the third wave group that was supposed to drive the Israeli economy (only about 700 thousand people out of 6.5 million). This figure can explain a great many things that are happening in the Israeli economy. But the big surprise of the State of Israel is the fact that about half of the population of the State of Israel is sitting on the birth wave (about 3 million). The meaning is that if this model is correct, then when this age group enters the spending wave, it will drive the Israeli economy. Israel today is the only western culture whose population structure is like this. Most western cultures, except the USA, suffer from a completely opposite population structure.
These predictions should be taken with a limited guarantee. A futurist who made a prediction, and whose prediction matched it, is a bad futurist. The role of futurists is not to know the future. Our job is to research trends, not in order to know what will happen, but in order to return to the present and help the decision makers to change the trends. If we identify "negative" trends, our job is to help decision makers to overcome this negativity. If we identify "positive" trends, it is our job to help the decision makers strengthen the trends. So if our predictions come true, the conclusion is that we did nothing.
An example of futurists' assistance to decision makers can again be found in the work of Dennett. When he analyzed the American population, he found that the average age of immigrants to the United States, in the early nineties, was 32, 33. Therefore, he advised the American immigration authorities to allow immigrants to enter at a younger age in order to increase the age group that would later enter the wave of consumption and drive the The American economy. Indeed, the American immigration authorities gradually lowered the average age of the immigrant to the USA. Currently he is 22, 23 years old with the stated goal of bringing in more people from this age group. This is an example of management, management in light of forecasts.
Another model that can be used to make predictions deals with the force that drives the human race to develop technologies. This theory mainly refers to homo-spins, and homo-spins spins. This theory tries to explain what drives Homo sapiens to develop tools. And we are talking about the fact that the homo-spins went through several upheavals, or dimensions in his cognition. We claim that the consciousness of the physical freedom in the space of the Homo-Spines has developed in the last thirty thousand years, in several stages. As the consciousness of physical freedom expanded, man developed tools of an entirely new kind. That is, we are driven by the strong need to be much more free within the space.
30 thousand years ago, the human race was scattered in small groups across the globe. The living space was 5 kilometers outside the cave. Physical freedom was almost nil. The information, and the tools that man developed barely passed from group to group. Gradually the consciousness dimension of freedom expanded. Man began to grow agricultural products and looked for ways to share the surplus with other groups. Trade routes gradually developed where science, knowledge of cultures, languages and religions could be transported.
About 500 years ago, man began to move in space lengthwise and horizontally during the days. Until then we sailed mostly near beaches. Now, the human race begins to sail through space, and its freedom of space is perfected. In a short time, only 35 years, the great period of discoveries takes place. The human race discovered new lands, continents, cultures, religions and resources. Looking back 400 years in history, it seems that those European countries/civilizations that knew how to develop the tools of great freedom in space and knew how to use them, controlled about 85 percent of the infrastructure, resources and geo-politics of those days.
About a hundred years ago, freedom in space increased again when man developed the ability to move through the air. Soon after, people were placed on the moon. in the last hundred years. The whole world has changed. If this theory is true, then the human race begins a new phase in its consciousness and therefore it is going to develop tools that we never imagined. This phase that we started at the end of the twentieth century, the beginning of the 21st century, is called the fourth dimension. I call it "the gate to nothing". In this dimension for the first time we can move in space without the need for drag. The mobile industries are just the beginning. We cannot abolish space, we are trapped within it, but we can try and blunt the importance of space in shaping the identity of the human race. In the coming years, and it will take decades, we will try to compress the space to critical masses.
Already today we manage to pass barriers that we did not believe could be crossed. For example the speed of light. Scientists have managed to accelerate the speed of light at a speed that is 300 times faster. And if you can accelerate the speed of light, you can slow down the speed of light. Just recently they managed to lower the speed of the particles to almost 30 meters per second, and managed to freeze the particles within themselves and accelerate them back. This has far-reaching implications for day-to-day industries. Starting with computers and ending with optical fibers. One of the problems with optical fibers is that you have to put a lot of accelerators in the way. But if particles can be accelerated entirely new fiber optic industries can develop.
In conclusion, we are starting a new kind of science, science of the 21st century. The main characteristic of this science is that there is no reality. There are no physical laws. Everything is here in our head. If we go through some kind of movement in our consciousness, some kind of maturity, we will discover new laws. And in the end we will understand that consciousness is the one that produces reality.
The lecture will be structured as delivered by Binat
Dr. David Passig, futurist at Bar Ilan University and head of the Center for Communication Technologies gave a lecture today at the annual event of Bynet Communication - 05 BYNET EXPO about the economy and technology of the fourth dimension. As part of the event, which took place at the David Intercontinental Hotel, Binat Communications revealed the future trends in the communications market in Israel and the world and focused on presenting communications solutions for modern organizations in the new era.
According to Dr. Pasig, "The human race has developed to this day in 3 dimensions. Every entry into a new dimension is accompanied by shocks in the political structures. Organizational structures of administrations have completely changed. Today we stand at the threshold of the fourth dimension. Already at this stage it is possible to identify which technologies will be in demand in the market. With our entry into the fourth dimension, the human race begins to move into a consciousness of existence in another dimension. Howie says that everything we know today has a high probability of being completely different."
Dr. Pasig added: "A large part of the space will disappear completely from us. We will be able to live and trade through many gateways, from satellite phones to remote presence - TELE PRESENCE (transmission using gloves and glasses). It will be possible to start moving not only materials and objects, but also ourselves - TLE PORTATION. This fact will motivate the human race to produce a new kind of knowledge and share it with others."
Dr. Passig explained: "It is important to understand that the ones who get rich are not the ones who invented the breakthroughs, but the ones who used them first. Especially those who invented unexpected and unconventional uses. The successful will be those who will redesign work patterns and ignore the existing structures. The most successful will be those who have the courage to imagine the most extreme future and prepare services and products for it." An example of this was given by Dr. Passig in the high-tech industry: not the hardware suppliers, but the generators of unusual uses are the newly rich, such as eBay, amazone.com and more.
Dr. Passig gave tips regarding technological developments, which many claim are impossible to materialize: "Until today we have operated within the laws of gravity. Right now we are starting to discover things that can be used to control gravity, such as elevators that go up in zigzags, cars of a completely different type, tiny spaceships instead of airplanes, roads with a different structure and, of course, communication infrastructures that are different from what we know today."
Alon Ben Tzur, CEO of Binat Communications: "With the end of the business year, Binat announces an increase of about 20 percent in the company's sales from last year. The market in Israel grew between 8 and 12 percent, so we grew twice as much as the market." Alon also added that "the new world of the world of communication is a world of stability, cohesion, a broad world with built-in information security. The clients want to see a stable, professional integrator with extensive capabilities and a clear business plan. This is part of the maturing process of the Israeli and global market."
To Dr. David Pasig's website
