Conclusion

Abstract

Albert Borgmann has written that ‘living in an advanced industrial country, one is always and already implicated in technology’ but because technology is so profoundly integrated into our way of being, our involvement normally remains implicit rather than self-consciously examined (Borgmann, 1984, pp. 104–5). The same could be said of our understanding of the Internet and power in international relations (IR). Understanding power in the information age means understanding the relationship between technology and power. And yet, as a discipline, IR has approached this problem largely without engaging deeply with technology either in an applied or theoretical sense.