Technologies have world-shaping powers. They have fundamentally changed ways of thinking as much as they influenced social practices. Plastics form a striking case.

Human beings are surrounded by plastics, in their computers, clothes, cars, kitchens, and beds, on their noses, and often in their bodies, in the form of hearing aids, hip replacements, and heart valves. In the early-twentieth century they were an odd curiosity; a century later a world without plastics is unthinkable and unlivable. They have permeated every conceivable practice and in most of these made themselves indispensable. It would, for example, be impossible to have twenty-first century supermarkets without plastic packaging, because the supermarket system is dependent on lightweight, airproof, and pre-packaged goods. In fact the transition from the traditional grocery store to the supermarket system was strongly encouraged by the emerging availability of plastic packaging materials in the 1950s and 1960s.

Plastics Science and Technology