34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't let first appearances fool you, October 20, 2001
When I first received this book and flipped through it, I was seriously tempted to send it back unread. The typesetting is... creative to say the least - lots of white space, multiple fonts, scattershot graphics. Indeed, it looks like you've received an extra long email from someone who's just discovered how to play with all the format settings. Given that I'd purchased a hard cover book at hard cover prices, I felt ripped off.
However, I decided to read it anyway, and I'm glad I did. It's a short read, but a wild ride, and it's packed with information about the biotech and economic revolution we're just getting into. There are lots of facts and figures to consider, and the author does an excellent job of providing thought-provoking analogies that may change the way you look at some things. In one example, he asks you to think of mosquitoes as flying hypodermic needles - right now these insects infect people with things like malaria, but scientists are trying to figure out how to use them to innoculate people instead.
This book would make an excellent Christmas gift for non-technical people who want to try to understand the potential impact of biotechnology, genetic engineering, computers, and the Internet. The choice of typesetting, it turns out, is deliberate: it's designed to convey the speed at which these changes are taking place, and it makes reading the book as easy as consuming a sound byte from the 11 o'clock news. It can get a bit heavy on the hype factor, but the author acknowledges this at the end.
It should also be required reading for all the politicians, bureaucrats and other politicos involved in making decisions about things like cloning, genetically modified foods etc. These people in particular have to be able to see past the immediate 'ick factor' reaction and to the long term economic consequences of the legislation they propose.
In short, its an excellent primer on the biotech revolution, and a great starting point for anyone seeking to understand what's happening. And even those who are used to, as I am, reading more technical material on this topic, it provides a good summary of what's happened to date, how technologies have converged, and what we might expect in the next decade.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Easy to Read and VERY INSIGHTFUL, December 11, 2001
If you want to understand some of the "big picture" issues in our society I strongly encourage you to read this book. Peter Drucker's Management Challenges for the 21st Century and Daniel Pink's Free Agent Nation are two other good reads on a knowledge-based economy.
While Mr. Enriquez spends most of the book talking about genomics (his area of expertise and knowledge) and the implications arising from developments in the area, he also tries to illustrate the impact such discoveries might have on the world economy in a very basic, easy-to-understand manner. Mr. Enriquez does an excellent job in talking about the importance of education and how the large differences among certain geographic regions may lead to a larger divergence of wealth in the next century.
In talking about genomics, Mr. Enriquez is quick to talk about cloning and the moral and ethical issues that will arise from such technology and how it will be EXTREMELY TOUGH to policy this technology due to its rapid evolution and ability to move into other countries borders. In the past the evolution of public policy was adjusted with the technologies but genomics is different in that we are talking about the potential to create human life via cloning, which stirs up all kinds of moral and social issues which affects politicians and their voting constituencies.
The one thing I know is that genomics is revolutionizing modern medicine as we breathe today. The new drugs, cures and foods that will be created and these WILL have VERY PROFOUND impacts on our standard of living in the next century and will cause tons of social implications. This book is your entrance into learning about geonomics in a very easy to read book. I highly recommend purchase of the book.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good but Flawed Overview of Post-Genomics Technology Trends, January 27, 2003
On the whole, this is a good read, integrating and extrapolating contemporary trends in national wealth & technology (especially genomics). Yet these insights suffer from several flaws. First is the uncritical idolatry of Craig Venter. Sure he pioneered excellent work in shotgun sequencing whole genomes. Yet Celera has now dumped Venter & their sequencers & the sale of genomic sequences (derived in part from PUBLIC information, I might add--although you wouldn't know it from *this* book), and is now in the business of finding new pharmaceuticals. This whole issue raises some important questions (like, "Who should legally 'own' gene sequence data?") that are nowhere addressed here. You can bet that the author spent NO TIME talking with Eric Lander, Francis Collins or other leaders of the public project. And there are business models besides Venter's (e.g., Big Pharma's public SNP consortium). Secondly, his chapter "Sleepless (and Angry) in Seattle"--on opposition to Globalization--is weak and vapid in the extreme. Apparently, there aren't any potential problems with rampant bioengineered tradition-busting world capitalism. Nor is there anything traditional worth salvaging from the slaughter. Enriquez' version of technology lacks vision, prioritization or leadership--its pure gang-busters. This might be fine, given leaders with moral authority a la Peter Drucker. But in our too-real post-Enron/WorldCom/Tyco world of sleazy ethics, criminal accounting and unabashed greed, I find it remarkably naive. And the environment? No problemo--global warming, air/water pollution, the fossilization of fossil fuel economies, & natural resource depletion notwithstanding. The anti-Globalization movement has some very important points that are sadly overlooked here. That said, the book offers a largely comprehensive and integrative look at the convergence of technologies facing us in the 21st century.
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