Copyright 2000, 2001 by Juan Enriquez Cabot All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Published by Crown Business, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group. Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
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Some material previously published in the Spanish language, in different form, by Editorial Planeta Mexicana, S.A. de C.V. in 2000. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Enriquez, Juan.
As the future catches you: how genomics and other forces are changing your life, work, health, and wealth / by Juan Enriquez.
1. TechnologySocial aspects. 2.
Gene mappingSocial aspects.
3. Civilization, Modern21st century. I. Title.
HM846+
303.483dc21 2001028239 eISBN: 978-0-609-50446-8 v3.1_r1 THE FUTURE OF ANY COUNTRY DEPENDS
ON BEING ABLE TO BRING UP CHILDREN LIKE DIANA AND NICOLAS
FULL OF CURIOSITY, WIT, AND KNOWLEDGE
ON HAVING MOTHERS LIKE MARY
SMART, KIND, AND COMMITTED
AND ON THEIR HAVING GRANDPARENTS WITH VALUES LIKE THOSE OF
MARJORIE AND TONY, JAY AND ANNE
CONTENTS
We are beginning to acquire direct and deliberate control over the evolution of all life forms on the planet.
The disparity in wealth between the richest and poorest nations used to be around 5:1.
Why wealth is now based on knowledge and how one person can generate more wealth than that produced by all people living in Israel, Malaysia, or Chile over the course of a year.
The Singapore Law Why the future belongs to small, clustered populations who build empires of the mind and ignore the temptationor do not have the option ofexploiting natural resources.
The worlds dominant language is no longer English, nor does it have a twenty-six letter alphabet The way a country, region, or group becomes dominant is by transmitting knowledge faster and more widely This is now done with two letters.
Societies that dont understand genetic discoveries or the challenges and opportunities that arise from these discoveries are functionally illiterate in the language that codes all life on the planet.
A revolution that may be 50 percent faster than the computer revolution.
Biocomputing could make genomes the worlds most powerful and compact coding and information systems.
Big changes on a small scale Biorobots the size of a virus.
The knowledge revolution is taking place in small, sharply defined areas.
The knowledge revolution is taking place in small, sharply defined areas.
One company generates more U.S. patents than 139 countries do together This generates new EMPIRES and new ghettos.
It slams into existing systems and destroys them while creating new systems. Countries and individuals can either surf new and powerful waves of changeor try to stop them and get crushed.
Many people, even some of the heads of megacorporations, feel that the world is moving too fast as companies, even industries, disappear.
Wealth is concentrated and portable.
MIT faculty and alumni produce as much wealth as all but twenty-two countries in the world. The United States keeps its leadership not by educating its own but by importing more and more brains.
Three-quarters of the worlds countries did not exist fifty years ago. We are likely to soon breed a further hundred states. Flags, borders, and anthems survive only where citizens are treated like shareholders Otherwise they leave, and take much of the countrys economic future with them.
We are in a time warp.
Technology accelerates trends, be they positive or negative. We are just beginning to glimpse how profoundly different our childrens lives will be in a post-genomics world.
BEFORE
YOU
START
READING
USUALLY BOOKS ON TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMICS ARE HARD TO READ. INSTEAD OF WRITING A TREATISE, I WOULD LIKE YOU AND ME TO HAVE A CONVERSATION. THERE IS SPACE ON EACH PAGE FOR YOUR OWN NOTES, THOUGHTS, QUESTIONS, REACTIONS. THE BOOK IS WRITTEN SO THAT ANY CURIOUS PERSON CAN READ IT.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A DOCTOR, SCIENTIST, OR COLLEGE GRAD. READ IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH. IF THERE IS SOMETHING THAT IS HARD TO UNDERSTAND COME BACK TO IT LATER. WHAT MATTERS ARE THE TRENDS GOING ON THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, NOT THE SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE AVAILABLE TODAY THAT WILL CHANGE BY THE END OF THE WEEK. IF SOMETHING INTERESTS YOU AND YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE, I HAVE INCLUDED ENDNOTES FOR MOST PAGES, WHICH WILL LEAD YOU TO MORE IN-DEPTH STUFF SOME TECHNICAL, SOME SIMPLY FUN AND INTERESTING. HOPEFULLY, I CAN TRANSMIT SOME OF THE EXCITEMENT I FEEL ABOUT THE MARVELOUS ADVENTURES GOING ON IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TODAY.
AND HOPEFULLY, THIS WILL BE A FUN READ. If you have any comments please send me a note at
I
MIXING APPLES, ORANGES, AND
FLOPPY DISKS
If it seems like your world has been topsy-turvy over the past few years Consider whats coming. Your genetic code will be imprinted on an ID card For better and worse. Medicines will be tailored to your genes and will help prevent specific diseases for which you may be at risk. (But your insurance company and your prospective employer may also find out that you are genetically disposed to, say, heart disease, or breast cancer, or Alzheimers.) Meanwhile, lone individuals are birthing not just companies but entire industries that rapidly become bigger than the economies of most countries. But unlike growth industries of the past cars and aerospace, for example the industries that will dominate our future depend on just a few smart minds Not a lot of manpower So during a period of prosperity and economic growth Wealth is ever more mobile and concentrated.
You and your children are about to face a series of unprecedented moral, ethical, economic, and financial issues. The choices you make will impact where you live, what you earn, what your grandchildren will look like, how long you live. It all starts because we are mixing apples, oranges, and floppy disks. Put an orange on your desk Next to a floppy disk or CD Although each seems very different today They are becoming one and the same. Your computer runs on a code based on 1s and 0s. If you change the order and number of these 1s and 0s By tapping the keyboard You capitalize a letter, change a sentence, send an e-mail, transmit a photograph or music.
The floppy disk is simply the container for these 1s and 0s But it is reading and rewriting the code inside that drives change. As of 1995, we began to read the full gene sequence of Bacteria, insects, plants, animals, humans. It is written in a four-letter code (A, T, C, G) If you change this code, just as if you change the code in a floppy disk or on a CD You change the message, the product, the outcome. WE ARE BEGINNING TO ACQUIRE DIRECT AND DELIBERATE CONTROL OVER THE EVOLUTION OF ALL LIFE FORMS