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Technology is linked to many key phenomena of international relations, including conflict, economics, and culture. Yet it has only recently been effectively incorporated into the study of International Relations (IR). The link between technology and (global) politics has been and remains under-appreciated. For millennia, though, technological evolution has deeply impacted global politics, security, economics, culture and the environment. For example, the diffusion of the stirrup in the Middle Ages allowed for development of mounted shock combat in connection with a feudalistic society revolving around chivalry.[i] Introduction of the Swiss pikemen during the Renaissance initiated an incremental shift towards standing armies, which in turn could only be maintained by modern states with vastly improved administrative and organizational capabilities.[ii] Rapid evolution of shipping technology and navigation during the sixteenth century provided European states with pivotal technological advantages to accelerate their colonial overseas endeavors against the resistance of primarily Arab maritime merchants. Technological superiority over colonized territories was finally achieved with the help of vastly improved firearms, cannons and new medical discoveries to cope with tropical diseases.[iii]

Modernity is deeply connected to technological progress. For instance, the invention, improvement and diffusion of the steam engine in the industrial revolution subsequently contributed to British hegemony during the 19th century.[iv] Prussia’s adaptation of railroad technology for military purposes and subsequent victories against the Habsburg Empire and France demonstrated the advantages of rapid and orderly troop relocations via efficient transportation networks.[v] Nuclear weapons and the Cold War symbolized globalization of military power-projection capabilities of a limited number of states paired with the prospect of nuclear annihilation of humankind.[vi] Such weapons rendered direct military confrontation between the superpowers virtually unthinkable. During the late 20th and early 21st century, information and communication technologies (ICTs) encouraged transitions from industrial to post-industrial information societies that are characterized by new forms of transnational production and distribution processes, the pervasive application of ICTs in an expanding range of products and services, as well as conflict forms that are cyber-, drone- or robot-dependent.[vii] State as well as non-state actors have developed new strategies, policies and tools to cope with these technology-driven challenges, to shape technological evolution itself, or to capitalize on new opportunities in realizing their specific goals.[viii]  This selection of examples demonstrates that technology indeed does matter for global affairs. And yet, the academic discipline of IR has only recently begun to seriously and systematically engage the topic. Why has it taken so long?

Technology, IR and Interdisciplinarity

The multifaceted character of technology has motivated different social and humanities disciplines such as history, sociology, philosophy, economics, geography and anthropology to investigate its origins, evolution and consequences for humanity.  IR also has addressed technology-related issues in one way or another since its inception in the 1920s. Unfortunately, a number of early – and mostly policy-oriented – studies of technological issues in world politics remained at the discipline’s periphery.[ix] However,........

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