I can’t recall when we all first began to collectively refer to the computing-powered high-technology sector, based primarily on the US West Coast, as simply “Tech” (I’ll drop the scare quotes but keep the capitalization for the rest of this essay). I think it was shortly after the 2000 dotcom crash. I do, however, have a theory about why we started doing that, and why we might soon have to stop.

Tech is obviously not the only locus where technology work, or even high-technology work, gets done.

Even the idea that Tech dominates software is shaky. I recall someone pointing out (this was admittedly about 15 years ago) that Lockheed Martin, an old economy aerospace company, writes and manages more code (and more complex code) than almost all Tech companies. But nobody has Lockheed Martin in mind when they use the word Tech without qualification.

On the other hand, Tesla is Tech but Ford is not. The former fundamentally views itself as a computer company that builds cars, while the latter views itself as a car company that might use computing (including advanced computing for driverless/EV car projects).

Other weirdness: IBM’s membership in Tech is increasingly suspect, while many companies that seem to be doing non-computing-centric things like synthetic biology and drones seem to qualify.

Apparently, a prominent role in the history of computing is no guarantee of inclusion in Tech. And not being primarily about computing or software is not a certain disqualification.

So what’s going on here?

What Makes Something part of Tech?

Though it’s tempting to conclude that the use of the term Tech in such a narrow way is arbitrary parochialism on the part of Silicon Valley (plus major outposts here in Seattle and a few other places), that’s not the reason.

Not least because everybody, not just the people within Tech, participates in the consensus to call it Tech, seems okay with the term, and has fairly good pattern recognition around what belongs in the set and what does not. Nor do technologists outside of Tech seem to particularly mind the apparent appropriation.

The charge of parochialism is also simply not true at least within technology in a broader sense. Most good software technologists I know are also generally interested in all kinds of technology and engineering, going on anywhere in the world. Technologists outside of Tech are also generally interested in the technology of Tech, and in learning from it.

What matters in whether or not something is part of Tech sector is not how much, or what sort of technology work is going on in a sector, but who drives it.

The dominant feature of Tech is that technologists, rather than sales and marketing people, or politicians, are generally in the driver’s seat.

Even when sales and marketing people are apparently in the driver’s seat, what’s driving them is demands from technology leaders in customer companies. One way or the other, every important decision in Tech is ultimately made by actual technologists (whether well or poorly is another matter). Even in the much-maligned world of AdTech, the algorithmic foundations are complex enough that engineers, rather than advertising professionals, end up making most of the key decisions.

All Tech is One

In applying this theory of Tech, you have to ignore organizational and product boundaries, and look at entire ecosystems and stacks, along lines of interoperability, OEM relationships, talent mobility, and M&A activity.

Tech is an overall pattern of strongly internally entangled economic activity by means of which pieces are dynamically bundled together to create services and products actually used by people. End-user capabilities emerge of the growing soup of deeply interconnected potentialities that is the Internet.