Genetics Book Review: As The Future Catches You
In As the Future Catches You, Juan Enriquez sets out to show “how genomics & other forces are changing your life, work, health & wealth.” Unfortunately, he falls far short of his aim. (Of course, I’d like to think the Genetics and Public Health Blog has the same aim.)
Focusing more on technology and the speed at which it advances, the book is filled with enough trivia to satisfy any wannabe Jeopardy contestant. Most of it is interesting and serves to prove his point that our world is becoming increasingly knowledge-based instead of production-based. Workers like me who possess the credentials but am unable to stay rooted in one physical location benefit.
In a knowledge economy…
You can work at your desk…
In your home…
In a hotel…
In a plane…
Very few people work in the same company or specialty all their lives anymore.
Your ability to understand and surf waves of change…
Will determine how well you do as you change jobs…
Every decade…
Every five years…
Or every few months.
In Silicon Valley…
If you are not stolen away by some company every few years (or months)…
You are not considered a hot property.
STABILITY IS A
MARK OF
SHAME.
These quotes are not enough to capture the book’s essence because Enriquez employs quirky font sizes, formatting, and other unconventional typesetting in order to draw the reader’s attention. The ellipses aren’t mine either. They’re to make us feel that we’re having a conversation instead of listening to a boring lecture. Maybe he also thought the choppiness imparted by the tricks made his prose poetic, but I found it annoying because they interrupted the flow of my thoughts.
Most disappointingly, the genomics discussion takes up only about 10% of the book. And much of that 10% is devoted to idolizing Craig Venter, founder of Celera and winner of the race against the U.S. government’s Human Genome Project to decode the entire human genome.
What I enjoyed most about the book was its optimistic outlook. I am often overwhelmed by the way the genomic revolution will change our lives for better or for worse. As The Future Catches You makes me look forward to the future.
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