This book examines the internet as a form of power in global politics. Focusing on the United States' internet foreign policy, McCarthy combines analyses of global material culture and international relation theory, to reconsider how technology is understood as a form of social power.

1. Introduction 2. Power to the People: Looking for Agency in IR Treatments of ICTs 3. Towards A Historical Materialist Theory of Technological Power 4. U.S. Foreign Relations and the Institutional Power of the Internet 5. Pursuing Technological Closure: Symbolic Politics, Legitimacy and Internet Filtering 6. The Narration of Innovation in American Internet Policy 7. Conclusion

Daniel R. McCarthy is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has previously taught at Aberystwyth University, the University of Sussex, and the London School of Economics.