In a search of New York Times articles, the first occurrence of the phrase "high technology" occurs in a 1957 story advocating "atomic energy" for Europe:"...Western Europe, with its dense population and its high technology..." The twelfth occurrence, in 1968, is, significantly, in a story about Route 128, described as Boston's "Golden Semicircle":

It is not clear whether the term comes from the high technologies flourishing in the glass rectangles along the route or from the Midas touch their entrepreneurs have shown in starting new companies.

By April 1969, Robert Metz was using it in a financial column—Arthur H. Collins of Collins Radio "controls a score of high technology patents in variety of fields.[3]" Metz used the term frequently thereafter; a few months later he was using it with a hyphen, saying that a fund "holds computer peripheral... business equipment, and high-technology stocks." Its first occurrence in the abbreviated form "high tech" occurred in a Metz in 1971.

Before 1970, the term "high technology" appeared a total of only 26 times; during the 1970s, 450 times; during the 1980s, over 4000 times. As of 2006, any technology from the year 2000 onward may be considered high tech.

Architecture:

In architecture, high-tech design involves the use of the materials associated with high tech industries of the 1980s and 1990s, such as space frames, metal cladding and composite fabrics and materials. High tech buildings often have extensive glazing to show to the outside world the activity going on inside. Generally their overall appearance is light, typically with a combination of dramatic curves and straight lines. In many ways high tech architecture is a reaction against Brutalist architecture, without the features of post-modernism.

The high tech style emerged in the 1980s and remains popular. In the United Kingdom, two of its main proponents are Richard Rogers and Norman Foster