As The Future Catches You , by Juan Enriquez

The book's subtitle, How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health and Wealth, might lead the reader to expect that the book is about to answer the question how. Yet Mr. Enriquez emphasizes several times that his objective is to kindle your own imagination.

The book is, in fact, a brainstorming exercise workbook. While reading it, your own lightbulbs begin to flash, and at an accelerating pace. Your own vision of humanity's technological future -- not necessarily that of the author -- approaches clarification. The author doesn't set out to impose his social goals; rather, you find your own imaginative seeds sprouting in his nourishment.

If you happen to be developing a futuristic glimpse, whether you are outlining the plot for a science fiction novel, an innovative platform for a political party, or a business plan for a new company, the book is likely to make revolutionary ideas pop into your mind faster than you can write them down.

The title of chapter 4, Empires of the Mind, is an allusion to a remark once made by Winston Churchill: "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." While we are enlightened about the importance of eduction and technology in the decades to come, we are also reminded about the inevitable decline, seen anywhere in world history, "when societies turn their backs on technology and stop building empires of the mind." [Page 59] In fact, "data drives empires."[60]

Enriquez suggests a definition of what it is to be human. "What distinguishes people from animals is the ability to understand abstract concepts and to communicate these concepts. The history of civilization can be summarized as a series of efforts to transmit and use increasing amounts of information." [61]

Important features of As The Future Catches You are its graphs and tables. These are not sequestered in inserts or appendices, but placed within the text wherever the need to make a point arises. Sources and concentrations of wealth from 1896 to 2000 [Pages 27, 40-42] ... some of the contrasts between rich and poor countries [52-53] ... numbers of genetic patent requests [94-96] .... But the book is nothing like an almanac, where raw facts are tabulated. The presentation is of obvious trends, some of which can be alarming. A first glance ensures that the reader gets the point, and the point is sharp.

Enriquez relies little on conventional paragraphs of words. Moving from to a catchy quotation to a startling fact to a bar graph to a bulleted list, individual pages of the book have the appearance of having been designed to be used as transparencies viewed on a projection screen at a discussion seminar (even while our copyright law tells us not to do that).

When he composes text, the author uses spaces unconventionally, like a beat poem by e. e. cummings [30, 31, 44, 58]. He switches mid-sentence from smaller to very large type, as if to imply "I am now screaming into your ear." [35, 45, 47, 54] Anticipating the use of the book as a workbook, the author anticipates where the reader is likely to scribble notes into the margin, and leaves the blank space there for your convenience.

But the book is not entirely free of the author's bias. Enriquez displays that he interprets world events in terms of competition among economic empires. He sets out to study the differences between the winning empires and the losing ones. This may be contrasted with the approaches of other writers, some of whom prefer to view the information revolution more organically, as a cellular interconnection from the smallest to the largest building blocks of life (as when Carl Sagan used to observe often that evolution has extended "repositories of information" to expanding domains, "from genes to brains to books").

However, for Juan Enriquez, who is, not coincidentally, affiliated with the Harvard Business School, the basic building blocks of human civilization appear to be economic empires, particularly, multinational corporations. Therefore, he chooses, as a significant data point worth pondering, the fact that, in 1998, the U.S. Patent Office granted 15 patents to Venezuelans, but 3,362 to South Koreans. [139] "To compete globally, one has to patent globally." [139] The reader may decide whether the author is making an observation about how the world is now structured, or taking a stand about how the world should be.

If I were to anticipate a future based so foundationally on big fish eating little fish, I would regard that as abyssmal pessimism. I don't consider any political or economic institutions to be untouchable. But those are only my personal values. You may decide for yourself whether the presentation here promotes futuristic optimism or pessimism -- or neither. But this is a fact: The option of building a less hierarchical and more noncompetitive future, in which everyone may more equitably enjoy the abundant fruits of technology, is not treated in the book. The mere possibility of a future in which people, having moved far beyond the need to convert everyone and everything into commodities to be exploited, may instead concentrate on personal growth and fulfillment, is not once mentioned in As The Future Catches You.

Therefore, book sellers and reviewers may have a tendency to classify the book strictly as a business management strategy book. In my view, however, the book is best filling its potential when used as a multi-purpose brainstorming tool, consistent with any vision of humanity's future each reader may prefer.

So let the book climb the bestsellers list for business books. To me, however, it's a valuable resource for all futurists and social dreamers.

260 pages, including 12-page 2-column index. B&W illustrations.