I’m on board with collaboration being a technology. Most people would agree that the internet is a technology, but then ask them to say what the internet is.

Is the internet the routers and cables that connect them? Those could easily be replaced and the internet would still exist. At its core, the internet is an agreement that when another machine sends a packet that looks like this, we will interpret it as that. It’s a social agreement, implemented in code.

Because it exists outside of code or machines (in the RFCs), you can use technologies like “pen and paper” and “homing pigeons” to implement IP. It’s just a set way to collaborate, like democracy or money.