Secondary Activities
High-technology industry
Describe the landscape of high-tech industry.
High-technology (high-tech) industry is the latest generation of manufacturing. It is based on intensive research and development (R&D), producing advanced scientific and engineering products.
Its workforce is different: professional, white-collar workers (scientists, engineers, designers) make up a large share, and they outnumber the blue-collar production workers.
Examples include robots on assembly lines, computer-aided design (CAD) and manufacturing, electronic controls of smelting and refining, and constant development of new chemical and pharmaceutical products.
Its landscape looks nothing like old industrial towns with their smoke-stacks: it consists of low, neat, spread-out buildings combining offices, plants and laboratories, in planned business parks.
High-tech industries cluster in regionally concentrated, self-sustaining, highly specialised areas called technopolies. The best known are Silicon Valley, near San Francisco, and Silicon Forest, near Seattle, in the USA.
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