Area-wide integrated pest management (AW-IPM) of insect pests relies on surveillance and communication to estimate wild population size, guide targeted control, and determine the effectiveness of any pest control action. However, knowing where and when pests arrive in real-time, communicating the information quickly, and delivering insect pest control in a coordinated manner are potential barriers to achieving area-wide management. Agricultural technology is creating opportunities to remove these barriers, which in turn will facilitate the adoption of AW-IPM. Technology advances in insect surveillance (detection and monitoring), data flow and information communication are being realized, and increasingly becoming commercially available. This technological change is largely being driven by macro-economic trends of increased cost of labour, international agricultural trade and shifting consumer demands, and a confluence of new hardware technologies that free computation from the desktop. As professionals and practitioners of pest management, there is an opportunity to shape technological solutions to remove barriers to AWIPM, and to achieve sustainable pest management across commodities and pests. Yet, the success of the technological solution and its area-wide implementation will depend on the way that we think about the problem (innovation), and the solutions (engineering).