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by colordrops 3228 days ago
It seems that "tech" has come to be a colloquialism for "digital".
2 comments

It is not that surprising given that the most apparent technological advance in our lifetime has been the internet.

I would be curious to see what "technology" was a colloquialism for different periods in time. My suspicion is that it would refer to the most impactful and visible innovations of that time.

Well, the word comes from the ancient Greek "τέχνη" (techne) which meant "craft" -- it basically meant creating things in the real world rather than "ἐπιστήμη" (episteme) which meant abstract knowledge, which is what philosophers were after.
But the epistomology of a word does not determine its meaning. Otherwise the art versus craft debate would be difficult to apply with its original meanings.
Wasn't agriculture the first technology?
I think “tech” is short for “information technology”, a term introduced almost six decades ago: https://hbr.org/1958/11/management-in-the-1980s