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Summary: great book and great research
Review: Great research on many facts and scary to think of the widening income gap between the knowledge economy and others if it becomes true. I feel that the gap will be lessen the world income distribution could not go on like this. It could cause a collapse and chaos of the present system.
Rating: 
Summary: Huh?
Review: I am a librarian. We have this book in our collection only because it was given to us for free. I'm not sure what all of the praise is for. It is puzzling to me.
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Summary: The Future Lies Ahead of Us -- Not Behind. Preparre!
Review: I have been hypnotized by this seemingly brief book for over a month now. Initially, I was attracted to the cover of the book (ideas catching fire) -- at least enough to take a closer look inside -- what I now consider one of the most important books to be published this year. On first glance, once I saw that As the Future Catches You dealt with what appeared to be "scientific" topics, I was inclined to put it back down on the counter and move on. The pure sciences have never been my greatest interest or strength. Yet, as I started to read the headings of the sections of the book, and sampled some of the initial ideas, the fire that the cover portrays lit inside me! After reading the first ten pages I was absolutely 'ablaze'. Ironically, this short book has taken me longer to work through than most 500 or 600 page books I have read. It is a collection of facts, cases, arguments, criticisms and scenarios that demand some serious and sometimes sobering thought and reflection. My now well worn book is filled with notes and underlining, along with personal reflections that grew out of points that the author made, or catalyzed, in my own mind while considering his presentation. Juan Enriquez writes very clearly and compellingly about how the future will be significantly different than the present. While many of us are quite proud of the change we have managed to adapt to in the past decade as technology diffusion took place and changed our world in record time, we have likely given little thought to what other changes we might need to prepare ourselves to face in the short term. As the Future Catches You - does just that. It gets our attention in a very big way. Juan Enriquez informs us that the rapidly emerging advances in genome research, coupled with technology and economics will change us in ways that will make the technological revolution of the past decade seem minor The author presents a book that appears playful on the one hand because of the layout and creative use of type font but all of that is actually hypnotically deceptive. This little 'playful' book is a very serious instrument, which clobbers us over the head, page after page, with particularly compelling facts, conclusions and new food for thought - page after page, over and over. Enriquez urges us to prepare for what is to come - not by looking in our rear view mirrors while driving onward- but by opening our eyes, facing front, hanging on tight, getting ready for the ride and a fast one it will be at that! The genetic revolution is well underway. This is not a "could happen" book. In As the Future Catches You, we meet figures whose names are not yet known in many households- yet these are names that will become as important, if not more so, that the greatest change leaders our world has ever encountered. These are the researchers and other members of the 'knowledge' community, all seekers, who are already far beyond most of us in their thinking and in what they have already achieved. These folks are not celebrity figures. We don't hear about them everyday. There isn't much interest in their personal lives. Theirs is not a 'sexy' medium or industry. Yet, these trailblazing scouts are already far out on a pretty uncharted path drawing up some maps that many of us will eventually come to likely know like the 'back of our own hands.' These men and women are leading the charge on a new and very dramatic wave of changes in scientific, social, ethical, psychological, physical, spiritual and personal realms. Every educated person needs to know more about these men and women and their work. And we need that information YESTERDAY! Genes, Computers, Economics, Knowledge, Globalism, Education. In combination, within new fields, some of which we don't even know what to call, we are about to see a diffusion of innovation that is building to a launch speed unlike any timeframe or pace we, or our ancestors and their forbearers, has ever witnessed. Enriquez seems to want to shake us, shock us, electrify us, cajole us, insult us and use whatever means he can to get us to make a personal "leap of faith" toward better preparedness for the future. His efforts did that to me. I am sitting up straight and paying lots of attention! This initially reluctant reader is convinced that Juan Enriquez is absolutely on target. The train is leaving the station. Our choice is whether we want to be on the train or we want to watch its rear end as it leaves - whether to be a part of the trip or to be left behind! This is the decision that each of us will need to face. So too, every country around the world will need to pay complete attention to this same question. A journey is starting. Are we going to be a part of it? Or, will we be left behind wondering what we didn't know that we obviously have lost out as a result of our ignorance. While we may seek to dismiss the ideas Enriquez outlines as possibly overblown, or far too science-fiction- like, his research is so completely thorough, his arguments so compelling and clear and his conclusions so obvious, that it is hard to dismiss what is reported to us. I believe that this is a book every college and university should immediately add into its curriculum as required reading for careful study. Any person being initially educated for tomorrow's world at this point must be steeped in the language that Juan Enriquez only introduces us to in his small effort. For those of us who have completed our formal education, it's time to get our minds in full gear again; it's time to do a bit of studying and learning all over again! While some of us may have had some fantasies about a slower paced tomorrow - at least slower than the last ten years of change - it seems we 'ain't seen nothin' yet! So we better get ready! It's time to travel --- forward! An Outstanding Mind Expanding Read!
Daniel J. Maloney...
Rating: 
Summary: don't be put off by the format when you open this book
Review: I was expecting the worst when I saw the unconventional format of this book--written in that "use up lots of space with few words" style where the text changes font size about every paragraph. Really a Powerpoint-book format. But it all works very well. If written in normal paragraphs and font size, this book would be about 25% the size, but if you accept that you've spent the money for an essay and not a book, it's a compelling essay. I'm looking forward to when this author really publishes a full length book.
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Summary: Highly Recommended!
Review: If you read only one book about the looming genetics revolution, As the Future Catches You would be a pretty good pick. After laying a foundation with a basic introduction to DNA and the genetic sciences, Juan Enriquez takes the reader on a tour of the mystifying advances that are putting humans in greater control of their own evolutionary destiny. This book is designed as much to inspire questions as to answer them, and uses a variety of font styles and sizes and almost poetic prose to provoke the thoughtful involvement of the reader. We from getAbstract recommend this book to any reader who doesn't want to let the future catch him off guard.
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Summary: Easy to Read and VERY INSIGHTFUL
Review: If you want to understand some of the "big picture" issues in our society I strongly encourage you to read this book. Peter Drucker's Management Challenges for the 21st Century and Daniel Pink's Free Agent Nation are two other good reads on a knowledge-based economy. While Mr. Enriquez spends most of the book talking about genomics (his area of expertise and knowledge) and the implications arising from developments in the area, he also tries to illustrate the impact such discoveries might have on the world economy in a very basic, easy-to-understand manner. Mr. Enriquez does an excellent job in talking about the importance of education and how the large differences among certain geographic regions may lead to a larger divergence of wealth in the next century. In talking about genomics, Mr. Enriquez is quick to talk about cloning and the moral and ethical issues that will arise from such technology and how it will be EXTREMELY TOUGH to policy this technology due to its rapid evolution and ability to move into other countries borders. In the past the evolution of public policy was adjusted with the technologies but genomics is different in that we are talking about the potential to create human life via cloning, which stirs up all kinds of moral and social issues which affects politicians and their voting constituencies. The one thing I know is that genomics is revolutionizing modern medicine as we breathe today. The new drugs, cures and foods that will be created and these WILL have VERY PROFOUND impacts on our standard of living in the next century and will cause tons of social implications. This book is your entrance into learning about geonomics in a very easy to read book. I highly recommend purchase of the book.
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Summary: The New Convergence
Review: Juan Enriquez is the first author to spot and describe for us the new convergence of the 21st century. "As The Future Catches You" gives lucid overviews of the concurrent revolutions in bioinformatics, genomics, nanotechnology, and proteomics. It combines this with a call to arms for the ambitious worker and the nation state of how to survive and thrive in the world fo the future. If you're still suffering from "revolution fatigue" that you developed during the 1990s, you haven't seen anything yet, and Enriquez's book is the best roadmap so far.
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Summary: You are Caught! And Your are It
Review: Juan Enriquez's book covers a highly complex and hard to understand set of developments that has challenged the brightest minds of the planet. Yet, he has done this very skillfully so that the layman can understand the monumental implications of these accomplishments. He engages us in a conversation and in a very unconventional manner plays with font sizes and dazzles us with enticing and easy to understand graphics. To the casual observer this might seem to have been easily done, but this would be deceiving. Similar to dancing, things that seem to have been easily done actually took more skill rather than ease.
I read this book after 9/11, and I find that it is just as valuable now if not more so since 9/11.
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Summary: Good but Flawed Overview of Post-Genomics Technology Trends
Review: On the whole, this is a good read, integrating and extrapolating contemporary trends in national wealth & technology (especially genomics). Yet these insights suffer from several flaws. First is the uncritical idolatry of Craig Venter. Sure he pioneered excellent work in shotgun sequencing whole genomes. Yet Celera has now dumped Venter & their sequencers & the sale of genomic sequences (derived in part from PUBLIC information, I might add--although you wouldn't know it from *this* book), and is now in the business of finding new pharmaceuticals. This whole issue raises some important questions (like, "Who should legally 'own' gene sequence data?") that are nowhere addressed here. You can bet that the author spent NO TIME talking with Eric Lander, Francis Collins or other leaders of the public project. And there are business models besides Venter's (e.g., Big Pharma's public SNP consortium). Secondly, his chapter "Sleepless (and Angry) in Seattle"--on opposition to Globalization--is weak and vapid in the extreme. Apparently, there aren't any potential problems with rampant bioengineered tradition-busting world capitalism. Nor is there anything traditional worth salvaging from the slaughter. Enriquez' version of technology lacks vision, prioritization or leadership--its pure gang-busters. This might be fine, given leaders with moral authority a la Peter Drucker. But in our too-real post-Enron/WorldCom/Tyco world of sleazy ethics, criminal accounting and unabashed greed, I find it remarkably naive. And the environment? No problemo--global warming, air/water pollution, the fossilization of fossil fuel economies, & natural resource depletion notwithstanding. The anti-Globalization movement has some very important points that are sadly overlooked here. That said, the book offers a largely comprehensive and integrative look at the convergence of technologies facing us in the 21st century.
Rating:
Summary: Good but Flawed Overview of Post-Genomics Technology Trends
Review: On the whole, this is a good read, integrating and extrapolating contemporary trends in national wealth & technology (especially genomics). Yet these insights suffer from several flaws. First is the uncritical idolatry of Craig Venter. Sure he pioneered excellent work in shotgun sequencing whole genomes. Yet Celera has now dumped Venter & their sequencers & the sale of genomic sequences (derived in part from PUBLIC information, I might add--although you wouldn't know it from *this* book), and is now in the business of finding new pharmaceuticals. This whole issue raises some important questions (like, "Who should legally 'own' gene sequence data?") that are nowhere addressed here. You can bet that the author spent NO TIME talking with Eric Lander, Francis Collins or other leaders of the public project. And there are business models besides Venter's (e.g., Big Pharma's public SNP consortium). Secondly, his chapter "Sleepless (and Angry) in Seattle"--on opposition to Globalization--is weak and vapid in the extreme. Apparently, there aren't any potential problems with rampant bioengineered tradition-busting world capitalism. Nor is there anything traditional worth salvaging from the slaughter. Enriquez' version of technology lacks vision, prioritization or leadership--its pure gang-busters. This might be fine, given leaders with moral authority a la Peter Drucker. But in our too-real post-Enron/WorldCom/Tyco world of sleazy ethics, criminal accounting and unabashed greed, I find it remarkably naive. And the environment? No problemo--global warming, air/water pollution, the fossilization of fossil fuel economies, & natural resource depletion notwithstanding. The anti-Globalization movement has some very important points that are sadly overlooked here. That said, the book offers a largely comprehensive and integrative look at the convergence of technologies facing us in the 21st century.
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