[.ca] As the Future Catches You: How Genomics and Other Forces ... (ISBN 0609609033)

From Amazon.com:
In As the Future Catches You, Juan Enriquez of the Harvard Business School attempts to capture the trajectory of technological progress and understand the forces shaping our social and economic futures. Enriquez argues that February 2, 2001--the date that anyone with Internet access could contemplate the entire human genome--is akin to 1492 and Columbus's discovery of America. Instead of a new continent however, Enriquez sees the alphabet of DNA (A, adenine; T, thymine; C, cytosine; and G, guanine) and predicts that it will be the "dominant language and economic driver of this century." While none of the ideas presented here are entirely new, As the Future Catches You stands out because of Enriquez's ability to view and connect trends--genomics in particular--in a way that just about anyone can understand. Eye-popping typography and graphics coupled with a compact and almost poetic writing style make this thought-provoking book one to savor. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

Introductory to Economics:
As the Future Catches You, by Juan Enriquez, is a great book that explains the future, past, and present state of the economy. The book is written in many different types of font, which makes it interesting when the reader becomes tired of facts. It includes many statistics that amaze the reader by how large a gap there is between the wealthier countries and the poorer countries. The book is hard to understand at times because of the business language and confusing information. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in business and is willing to take the time not only to read it, but also understand the content. Also the reader might want to be of a certain age before they try to read it so they can have a better understanding of it. The book focuses on four main countries, USA, Mexico, China, and Japan. The writing style was clear and had a new approach that made it enjoyable. The information presented made it impossible to stop reading because you wanted to learn what happened next to the country. Each country took form and was a type of character that the reader sees through the tough times and through the good times. This book helped me understand how fast the economy is changing and how much more business is coming to depend on knowledge and not manpower or natural resources.

light content and misleading title:
One would expect, given the subtitle "How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth", that this book has many revelations about Genomics. But in reality the topic covers only a few pages (after compressing the meaningless and odd typesetting to normal page format). This is clearly an example of a book being dressed up for a market after it was written, rather than a book written for a market. The majority of the book makes a case for the importance of technology in general (as opposed to life sciences or genomics in particular). Its a well presented argument, but not what I expected to read given the title. If you're considering buying this book, I suggest you browse it first.

Why reviews of this book vary from * to *****:
This book reads like an engaging lecture. If you're looking for an extensive and scholarly work . . . you'll give it a single *. If you're looking for a well written, extended and readable Powerpoint presentation (and I mean that in all seriousness) you'll rate this book much more highly. I was surprised by how light the book was on words/$ but was pleasantly surprised that after I'd adjusted my expectations the book was readable and engaging. And it's significantly less expensive than the thousands Enriquez probably charges to deliver this presentation in person . . .

Huh?:
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.

Good, if you like PowerPoint:
The most telling phrase was in the afterword: "I apologize for simplifying so many debates and concepts." At least he knew what he was doing. I found this to be a turbulent stream of factoids, hero worship, and incomplete ideas. The author seems not to distinguish between opening a discussion and failing to finish a thought. The quantitative statements are sometimes incorrect - his decimal points seem to wander as much as the rest of the presentation. Visually, the text is a mess. Maybe he wanted it to look lively and creative, instead of putting the life into the text itself. His typographic "creativity" tops out around the Crayola level, though. It's what I'd expect of someone who just discovered all those cool controls over fonts, sizes, layout, etc., but has not yet discovered they don't all need to be used on any one page. In fact, this typography interferes with a good reader's perceptual habits. I actually like aggressive use of type, like some of David Carson's - but Carson brings visual competence to the page. The one graph (p.147) is uninformative even by USA Today standards. It would probably have Tufte spinning in his grave. (As far as I know, Tufte is alive as of this writing - that graph might well kill him.) Toffler's 'Future Shock' needs continuous replacement, because the future keeps getting here and keeps being something we didn't expect. I'm glad to see people writing about the ever-changing future. I welcome thoughtful, communicative visual presentations. This book just doesn't give me either.