High Technology

High technology broadly refers to the advanced expertise and techniques that are used to directly address, examine, and solve specific tasks. It is manifested not only in products but also in processes. In general, the industries involved in high technology require higher levels of human capital than do other sectors given the high amounts of research and development required. In recent use, high technology generally has encompassed industrial categories such as electronics, telecommunications, information technology, and biotechnologies. However, the applications of high technology now extend to and influence a number of fields and industries, including those throughout manufacturing and services.

High-technology industries are viewed in many circles as drivers of regional economic development. Many centers of recent growth, such as Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Route 128 area around Boston, have been based around concentrations of high-technology activities, including software research and development and (earlier) the manufacture of information technology hardware. Many researchers have suggested that positive externalities result when similarly focused firms, customers, workers, and other support activities are concentrated in proximity to one another. This colocation in turn spurs competition and innovation, which drive progress in the field. In a sense, these regions of high technology often are viewed as the traditional industrial districts once were viewed.

Advances in high technology have made it possible for individuals, groups, and enterprises to communicate swiftly with each other across great distances. Technical progress and the cost reductions in information creation, management, and dissemination that often result from such progress have also been benefits of these advances. In most respects, high technology has led to many parts of the world essentially becoming closer together due to enhanced methods of communication. In many ways, the results of these new arrangements and relationships have led to a reevaluation of space and time as described by David Harvey. An issue to note is that those regions and groups with greater access to high technology can benefit, whereas those that do not have access to these technologies have, in effect, become more distant from the rest of the connected world. These spatial relationships and the impacts of technology are of interest to geographers.