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Can you imagine a world where your genetic code can be digitally imprinted on an ID card? Where new knowledge, technology and wealth are concentrated in ever smaller groups of nations and individuals. Where the future between rich and poor becomes a gaping chasm? Where lone individuals are giving birth to entire new industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries but involve creation of very few jobs?
As the Future Catches You is a kaleidoscopic glimpse of the way we will all live and work in the emerging digitized, globalized, genetically engineered world.
2001 will be remembered 100 years from now as the beginning of a new kind of world. The publication of the complete human genome is a line diving history into before and after, a defining event that will combine with developments in technology and economics to totally transform everything: how we work and play, how we conceive and rear our children, what we aspire to accomplish and what it means to be a human being. If you think the world has changed a lot in the last ten years you haven't seen anything. Brace yourself for the next five!
As the Future Catches You reads like a conversation with someone who has seen the future. But it resembles no other book. A typical page may contain just a few dozen words. 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.
Jacket Description/Flap:
You will never look at the world in the same way after reading As 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 sell - both countries and individuals - will 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.
The future is catching us all.
Let it catch you with your eyes wide open.
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