I have two views of this book. The first is that is rather tedious to read, lacks scientific accuracy (especially with regard to physics) and is very much in line with the post-AOL merger CNN - it goes for the shocking not the real news.
The second view is that it obviously took a lot of work to assemble this data and as the author notes at the end, the research provided enough material for three 'real' books (his term not mine).
Overall this is a lot like Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth". There are a lot of facts which we could dispute but which I think are probably mostly correct. There is a lot of interpretation which is probably a lot less accurate because it's the interpretation that requires the skill, knowledge, wisdom and genius. Mr. Enriquez makes a lot of very bold statements that are based on a very few facts - taken totally on their own merit. How many of these facts turn out to be causal in terms of global change we'll have to wait and see. He's certainly got some good bets. His analysis of education in the US vs. other countries is a sad trend that has been known about for years. Are we going to change any of that? Perhaps - but we'll need to shut of ESPN and get of the couch first and that may just be too hard.
He comments that most doctors will be focusing on prevention rather than cures in the future. I've got news. They have been doing that forever but nobody is listening. The very people that could do with a little prevention are happy to eat at McD's, watch TV all night and don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. Your doctor can’t affect cultural change. What we need is a good TV virus so we can get back to doing other things like talking to each other - in person, via email or in SecondLife - your choice.
I found a lot of small 'facts' with rather distorted physics and Computer Science. Since these are areas in which I have an interest, it leads me to wonder if a biologist might find similar problems. Perhaps a chemist would too. Perhaps he sold out to AOL and no longer reports accurate news but rather focuses on ratings. Perhaps I am being too harsh. It is impossible to find one person that can be perfectly knowledgeable in all areas, yet books like this tend to be popular with those who see themselves as scientifically informed but who do not know what the difference between Silicon and Silicone is. These people will reproduce this material at parties - with just a slight variation and we'll be into another 'global warming' debate pretty soon. This time the focus will be on whether you want your genes to be inserted into pigs. It's (possibly) wonderful that we might get new hearts without the need to extract them from other people but how much like you do you want pigs to become?
As a test, I asked my 11 year-old daughter to open the book anywhere, read a bit and tell me what she thought. She sat reading quietly much longer than I expected. Her summary was that it was "mostly about old people" and that it was "a bit weird". So, no Earth-changing party conversation piece there and I suppose that means I could be wrong about the whole thing but, like Mr. Enriquez, I'm pretty confident that I have it correct.
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