Conclusion

The first, and the principal, conclusion of this survey is as follows : the development of materials is going to have an impact on society that is at least as great as that of the information technologies. This entails major consequences for the strategy of firms and of the authorities, too inclined in the past to think solely in terms of the computer revolution. All the lines of argument developed in this report in fact confirm that the reconception of products and processes, that the satisfaction of quality and reliability requirements, that energy savings, the creation of new industrial articles or new services, and the decentralization of human activities in space, are just as dependent on the mastery of materials as on that of information technologies.