A survey of French public opinion towards innovation and technical progress was undertaken in March 1975. It creates an artificial way of life, threatening the life of the next generation, and turning men into robots. Artificial needs are created to sell new consumer products. But innovations transforming production methods are beneficial to both management and labour. Technical progress will contribute in future to improving production methods, to raising levels of income, to helping developing countries, and to solving the energy crisis; it will not contribute to the reduction of unemployment, the reduction of risks of war, increasing harmony with nature, or giving a poetic sense to life. Major priorities for innovation in the next few years should be the reduction of waste of all sorts, the exploitation of new energy sources, the improvement of working conditions, and the protection of nature. These severe judgements by French public opinion of the industrial way of life and of technical progress have been presented to industrialists, who questioned the validity and the utility of this sort of inquiry.