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Stories
"I
would like you and me to have a conversation," HBS senior
research fellow Juan Enriquez tells his readers in the prologue
of his new book, As the Future Catches You: How Genomics &
Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth.
He points out that he has left space on each page for note-taking,
and after expressing his hope that the book will be a "fun
read," he concludes by providing his e-mail address and urging
readers to contact him. It's an unusual beginning, but fitting
for this unusual book, a work that is informal in tone, presentation,
and typography despite its serious subject matter. Alternately
teasing and solemn - but unfailingly provocative - it
is intended to push the boundaries of intellectual engagement
in order to provide a deeper understanding of what the future
will mean to all citizens of the planet.
Enriquez, the founding director of the new Life Science Project
at HBS, believes that the future will be defined by the genomic
revolution and that world history today is at a fundamental turning
point. Combined with advances and developments in other fields,
the human experience, he argues, will soon be transformed. Indeed,
change - in medicine, technology, international relations,
economics, and human behavior, and as a phenomenon that stimulates
itself - is at the core of the book.
In the realm of science, Enriquez emphasizes the impact of the
following facts: Genomics will enable humans to control evolution
of all life forms; the genetics revolution is occurring 50 percent
faster than the computer revolution; private companies, from IBM
to DuPont to L'Oreal, will have the ability to rewrite
the source code of life; and nanotechnology will soon produce
"biorobots" the size of a virus. In human affairs, Enriquez
points out, the wealth disparity between the richest and the poorest
nations will soon be 1,000:1. In an age of super-technologies,
knowledge will be key and will enable tiny, well-educated nations
to prosper while the economies of much larger, less-educated countries
languish.
As the Future Catches You presents page after page of thought-provoking
facts, anecdotes, and ideas; it is an accessible and instructive
guide to the new age that lies just over the horizon, an era for
which the overworked adjective "revolutionary" will
truly apply.
by Juan Enriquez
(Crown
Business )
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