The bottom line
Materials are becoming more functional, adaptive and engineered for properties that conventional materials could not provide.
Why it matters
Self-healing materials, advanced coatings, bio-based substances and other innovations can change maintenance, product lifespan and design. The field will progress unevenly, with some applications commercializing much earlier than more ambitious programmable materials.
From the foresight archive
Jim Carroll first published this as Megatrend #16 on 2025-07-17. He revisited it one year later on 2026-08-26, using the retrospective to test the original call against what had happened since.
In that retrospective, Carroll’s own shorthand assessment was: Largely right, unevenly paced. Concrete, asphalt, and wound care are shipping working self-healing products today; automotive coatings and tires are commercializing slower than promised; programmable matter is exactly as far off as the skeptics said. The materials that heal are real. The materials that reshape themselves are still science fiction.
This page treats the 2025 article as the original foresight call and the 2026 article as the first evidence checkpoint. Later signals and scorecards can be attached without rewriting the historical record.