Nobody’s arguing about whether they use technology, but about whether their business is defined by technology enough to be called “tech companies”. Nobody refers to hospitals as “tech companies”?

What does "business defined by technology" actually mean? Can you describe it clearly?

Since technology is applied science, why does a hospital using complex scientific machines to deliver healthcare not qualify but a company building a webapp to order food does? Where's the line exactly?

Can your whole online business be trivially replaced with a phonecall to a local service? congrats you're not a company that can succeed in the tech space because the competition is skyhigh.

Nowadays i'd say a tech company is defined by the "tech" it is implementing to disrupt/control the market. no disruption tech = waste of vc capital. "we do x better" isn't enough to last unless it's so radically better it is a new space(google's call screening feature could be spun off into it's own company for eg)

What is the "tech space"? That's still conflating tech as just computing.

Yes. That’s how it is used.