Publisher's Synopsis
Three concurrent technological revolutions are likely to dominate the last decade of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first. Those in information technology and in biotechnology have been extensively written about, but that in new materials has been relatively neglected.;"The Materials Revolution" is a comprehensive survey of these new technologies and their impact upon the economy and society.;The book brings together articles from both the mainstream press and from the more specialized journals on the latest breakthroughs in superconductors, successors to silicon, high-performance plastics, new kinds of fabric, optical fibres, materials innovation and substitution, seabed materials, the processing of materials in space and the coming era of nanotechnology.;In his lengthy introduction Tom Forester outlines the main developments and warns that the West could find itself left behind by the commitment of the Japanese to pioneering and developing the uses of new materials which are likely to revolutionize our lives.
