HIGH-TECH

adjective and noun Also written hi-tech (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Science and Technology) adjective: Making use of or provided with technological innovations, especially microelectronics or computers; automated, advanced. noun: Technological hardware, automation; also, a style of sparse, functional design that embodies the modern technological ethos. Etymology: Abbreviated forms of high technology. History and Usage: The phrase started to be used as an adjective in the early seventies, when electronics began to affect consumer goods and the design of homes, taking over from the phrase with all mod cons (that is, modern conveniences). As a name for a style of design, high-tech only remained in fashion for a relatively short time; the adjective, though, and the associated noun in the sense of 'technological gadgetry' have remained very common throughout the eighties. So popular was the term in the early eighties that some considered it to have become more or less meaningless; it was also at this time that it acquired a jocular opposite, low-tech (which usually implied complete absence of technology). High-tech laid low: A ruptured $900 gasket dooms Challenger..., while a Soviet nuclear reactor at Chernobyl melts down. Life Fall 1989, p. 26 The natural childbirth movement attempts to redress the 'high-tech' approach to childbirth. Dorothy Judd Give Sorrow Words (1989), p. 9 Among the hi-tech companies to have prospered is Microvitec, whose technological prowess enabled it to take off with the home and education computing boom for a placing on the USM. Intercity Apr. 1990, p. 35 Textbooks are unglamorous, low-tech. Times Educational Supplement 14 Sept. 1990, p. 19