Chemistry in the Information Society.

In the 'information society' a substantial part of the active population deals with creation and transfer of information, rather than of physical commodities. Much of this activity is performed using computers. The role of chemistry, both as an agent and as object of the change in this transition, is analyzed. Chemistry and materials science are crucially important in the current semiconductor industry. If the experiments on 'molecular electronics' will lead to a break-through, that role will be further enhanced. The chemical processes involved in silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing are reviewed. Inversely, the profession of chemistry itself has already changed profoundly due to factors like: Computerization of chemical instrumentation and computerized information searching, data banks, etc.