Technology as a Source of Global Turbulence?

Abstract

Technology, defined as the accumulation of knowledge and artefacts for realizing human objectives in specifiable and reproducible ways,2 has always played a vital, if not central, role in international relations (IR) or international political economy (IPE). The history of the human race offers countless examples of this with regard to military, economic, social and cultural developments.3 The most profound effect of technological progress, especially since the fifteenth century, has been an increased density of the international system, caused by increasing and more rapid interaction. During the twentieth century, interaction capacities culminated in two important technological inventions: (1) nuclear weapons of mass destruction and their carrier systems; and (2) electrical and, later, electronic information and communication technologies (ICTs). The development of ICTs started in the second half of the nineteenth century (telegraph and telephone). Since the 1940s ICTs have spread to areas such as microelectronics and, computer technology (hardware), as well as related software development. Processes of convergence with telecommunication technologies and optoelectronics since the 1970s, enabled by the basic technological principle of digital binary code, have formed the basis for fundamental transformations in transnational politics, communication, finance, trade, production and culture.