Summary

You will never look at the world in the same way after readingAs the Future Catches You. Juan Enriquez puts you face to face with a series of unprecedented political, ethical, economic, and financial issues, dramatically demonstrating the cascading impact of the genetic, digital, and knowledge revolutions on your life. Genetics will be the dominant language of this century. Those who can "speak it" will acquire direct and deliberate control over all forms of life. But most countries and individuals remain illiterate in what is rapidly becoming the greatest single driver of the global economy. Wealth will be more concentrated and those with knowledge to sellboth countries and individualswill be the winners. Consider what will happen when: Your genetic code can be digitally imprinted on an ID card and your insurance company and employer see that you are genetically disposed to, say, heart disease. Pharmaceutical products are developed so that you can eat genetically modified broccoli to protect yourself from cancer. Cloning will be as common as in vitro fertilization and scientists can influence the genetic design not only of other species but of your own children. Creating wealth no longer requires many hands. Lone individuals are giving birth to entire new industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries on earth, but create very few jobs. As the Future Catches Youresembles no other book. A typical page may contain just a few dozen words. But each seemingly discrete fact is like a chip in an intellectual mosaic that reveals its meaning and beauty only as you step back and see the big picture. Juan Enriquez is like the best teacher you ever had, one who helps you to see something in a new light and makes you say, "Now I get it!" Juan Enriquez's main point is that technology is not kind, it does not say "please," but slams into existing systems and destroys them while creating new ones. Countries and individuals can either surf new and powerful waves of changeor get crushed trying to stop them. The future is catching us all. Let it catch you with your eyes wide open.

Author Biography

Juan Enriquez is the director of the Life Sciences Project at Harvard Business School, where he is building an interdisciplinary center focusing on how business will change as a result of the life sciences revolution. His article in Harvard Business Review, “Transforming Life, Transforming Business,” received a McKinsey Award, which recognizes the best articles published each year in HBR. Juan Enriquez has also published articles in Foreign Policy, Science, and Trends in Biotechnology and written op-eds for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Boston Globe. Earlier in his career he was the CEO of Mexico City’s Urban Development Corporation and an outspoken advocate o

Mixing Apples, Oranges, and Floppy Disks . . .
We are beginning to acquire direct and deliberate control over the evolution of all life forms . . . on the planet
The 390:1 Gap
The disparity in wealth between the richest and poorest nations used to be around 5:1
It is now 390:1 and increasing
The New Rich . . . and the New Poor Why wealth is now based on knowledge...and how one person can generate more wealth than that produced by all people living in Israel, Malaysia, or Chile over the course of a year
Empires of the Mind
The Singapore Law . . .
Why the future belongs to small, clustered populations who build empires of the mind and ignore the temptation–or do not have the option of–exploiting natural resources
Data Drives Empires
The world’s dominant language is no longer English, nor does it have a twenty-six letter alphabet . . .
The way a country, region, or group becomes dominant is by transmitting knowledge faster and more widely . . .
This is now done with two letters
Genetics . . . the Next Dominant Language Societies that don’t understand genetic discoveries or the challenges and opportunities that arise from these discoveries are functionally illiterate in the language that codes all life on the planet
VII
Is . . . a Hockey Stick
A revolution that may be 50 percent faster than the computer revolution
The Most Powerful Information System
Biocomputing could make genomes the world’s most powerful and compact coding and information systems
Nano World Big changes . . . on a small scale . . .
Biorobots the size of a virus
Revolution . . . in a Few ZIP Codes
The knowledge revolution is taking place in small, sharply defined areas
One company generates more U.S. patents than 139 countries do together . . .
This generates new Empires and new ghettos
Technology Is Not Kind . . .
It Does Not Say “Please"
It slams into existing systems and destroys them while creating new systems
Countries and individuals can either surf new and powerful waves change–or try to stop them and get crushed
Sleepless...(and Angry) in Seattle
Many people, even some of the heads of megacorporations, feel that the world is moving too fast as companies, even industries, disappear
High Tech . . .
High Pay . . .
High Mobility . . .
Wealth is concentrated and portable
MIT faculty and alumni produce as much wealth as all but twenty-two countries in the world
The United States keeps its leadership not by educating its own but by importing more and more brains
The Digital-Genomics Diaspora Three-quarters of the world’s countries did not exist fifty years ago
We are likely to soon breed a further hundred states
Flags, borders, and anthems survive only where citizens are treated like shareholders . . .
Otherwise they leave, and take much of the country’s economic future with them
Time Warp
We are in a time warp
Technology accelerates trends, be they positive or negative
We are just beginning to glimpse how profoundly different our children’s lives will be in a post-genomics world
Postscript
Notes
Credits
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

MIXING APPLES, ORANGES, AND FLOPPY DISKS . . .

If it seems like your world has been topsy-turvy over the past few years . . .
Consider what's coming.

Your genetic code will be imprinted on an ID card . . .
For better and worse.

Medicines will be tailored to your genes and will help prevent specific diseases for which you may be at risk.
(But . . . your insurance company and your prospective employer may also find out that you are genetically disposed to, say, heart disease, or breast cancer, or Alzheimer's.)

Meanwhile, lone individuals are birthing not just companies but entire industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries.
But unlike growth industries of the past . . . cars and aerospace, for example . . . the industries that will dominate our future depend on just a few smart minds . . .
Not a lot of manpower . . .
So during a period of prosperity and economic growth . . .
Wealth is ever more mobile and concentrated.

You and your children are about to face a series of unprecedented moral, ethical, economic, and financial issues.

The choices you make will impact where you live, what you earn, what your grandchildren will look like, how long you live.

It all starts because we are mixing apples, oranges, and floppy disks.

Put an orange on your desk . . .
Next to a floppy disk or CD . . .
Although each seems very different today . . .
They are becoming one and the same.

Your computer runs on a code based on "1"s and "0"s.
If you change the order and number of these 1s and 0s . . .
By tapping the keyboard . . .
You capitalize a letter, change a sentence, send an e-mail, transmit a photograph or music.
The floppy disk is simply the container for these 1s and 0s.
But it is reading and rewriting the code inside that drives change.

As of 1995, we began to read the full gene sequence of . . .
Bacteria, insects, plants, animals, humans.
It is written in a four-letter code (A, T, C, G) . . .
If you change this code, just as if you change the code in a floppy disk or on a CD . . .
You change the message, the product, the outcome.

We are beginning to acquire...
Direct and deliberate control...
Over the evolution of all life forms...
On the planet...
Including ourselves.

The skin and pulp of the orange that sits on your desk . . .
Is just packaging . . .
What matters is the code contained in the seeds.
Each seed has a long string of gene data that looks like . . .
The seed guides growth, how a tree and its leaves develop . . .
The size, flavor, color, shape of fruits.
If you can read the code . . .
And rewrite it . . .
You can turn an orange into a vaccine, a contraceptive, a polyester.
Each of these things has already been done in corn.

Today, bananas and potatoes can vaccinate you against things like cholera, hepatitis, diarrhea.
You can harvest bulletproof fibers . . .
Grow medicines in tobacco.
And it's not just apples, oranges, and corn that are rapidly becoming different organisms.

Mosquitoes
are flying hypodermic needles.
They can infect you with malaria, dengue, and other awful things.
They do so by transferring a little bit of genetic code
through their saliva . . .
Into your bloodstream . . .
Which then reprograms part of the way your cells operate . . .
By changing your genetic code ever so slightly . . .
In ways that can make you very sick.
So why not engineer mosquito genes so that they have the
opposite effect?

If mosquito saliva contained antibodies . . .
Or if you made it hard for malaria to mutate inside a mosquito's body . . .
You could immunize people and animals . . .
By making sure they were bitten.
Because the language of genes (A, T, C, G) is the same
for all creatures . . .
You can mix species.
If you are an artist, the genes that make jellyfish fluoresce
at night . . .
Can be used to make a bunny glow under black light.
If you are an M.D., the same genes can be placed in monkeys
to serve as markers . . .
Which help identify cures for diseases like Alzheimer's
and cancer.

By reading and rewriting the gene codes of bacteria, plants,
and animals . . .
We start to turn cells, seeds, and animal embryos into the
equivalent of floppy disks . . .
Data sets that can be changed and rewritten to fulfill
specific tasks.
We start deliberately mixing and matching apples and oranges . . .
Species . . .
Plants and animals.

These discoveries may seem distant, abstract, more than a little scary today.
But they will change the way you think about the world . . .
Where you work . . .
What you invest in . . .
The choices your children make about life . . .
What war looks like.

Many are unprepared for . . .
The violence and suddenness with which . . .
New technologies change . . .

Lives . . .

Companies . . .

Countries . . .

Because they do not understand what these
technologies can do.

Excerpted from As the Future Catches You: How Genomics and Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health and Wealth by Juan Enriquez
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.