Book excerpt: This volume chronicles the proceedings of the Symposium on Metallized Plastics: Fundamental and Applied Aspects held under the auspices of the Dielectrics and Insulation Division of the Electrochemical Society in Chicago, October 10-12, 1988. This was the premier symposium on this topic and if the comments from the attendees are any barometer of the success of a symposium then it was a grand success. Concomitantly, it has been decided to hold it on a regular basis (at intervals of 18 months) and the second event in this series is planned as a part of the Electrochemical Society meeting in Montreal, Canada, May 6-10, 1990. Metallized plastics find a legion of applications ranging from mundane to very sophisticated. A complete catalog of the various technological applications of metallized plastics will be prohibitively long, so here some eclectic examples should suffice to show why there is such high tempo of R&D activity in the arena of metallized plastics, and all signals indicate that this high tempo will continue unabated. For example, polymeric films are metallized for packaging (food and other products) purposes, and the applications of metallized plastics in the automotive industry are quite obvious. In the field of microelectronics and computer technology, insulators are metallized for interconnection and other functional purposes. Also plastics are metallized to provide electromagnetic shielding.