Route 128

Cultural  

1. Used as a synonym for high technology (see high-tech) (see also high-tech); this term refers to a highway encircling the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts, which is known for the concentration of electronics and computer firms located along it. (Compare Silicon Valley.)

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Example Sentences

Drawing on earlier research by UC Berkeley’s AnnaLee Saxenian, Gilson compared Silicon Valley to the tech corridor along Route 128 outside of Boston.

From Slate • Jan. 6, 2023

“I didn’t want to have a tasting room on Route 128 or to be beholden to all that.”

From New York Times • Sep. 30, 2021

But by the nineteen-seventies Route 128 had been overshadowed by Northern California.

From The New Yorker • Oct. 15, 2018

I met Chow earlier this year at TripAdvisor’s headquarters in Needham, Massachusetts, which are nestled into the side of the Route 128 highway, next to a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

From The Guardian • Aug. 17, 2018

The relations of businesses to one another in Silicon Valley and on Route 128 are very different, possibly resulting in those different outcomes.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond