There's a nice story in the Financial Times today showing how technology can help reinvent struggling areas.
Harland & Wolff, Belfast's famous shipyard, once the symbol of Northern Ireland's engineering prowess, has been reinvented as the region's science park, which the authorities hope will herald a second industrial golden age. Or, as one local businessman put it, a move "from ships to chips".
The inspiration behind the city's Institute for Electronics, Communications and Information Technology, which opens tomorrow, is John McCanny, professor of electrical engineering, fellow of the Royal Society and proven entrepreneur. He co-founded two high-technology companies, one of which invented the video technology behind Steven Spielberg's film Jurassic Park.
The Harland & Woolf park is far from being the only example of how technology firms can be brought in to help ease the pain of traditional industrial decline. Though many in run-down industrial areas voice genuine concern about switching from one industry to another, some parts of the country have benefited hugely from high-tech investment, as we wrote in an article last year.
Good luck to those at ECIT hoping to regenerate Belfast into a wired city; perhaps it will help counterbalance the loss of Media Lab Europe (over the border in Dublin) earlier this year.
