The concepts · Entry

Total Technologyn.

A technopolitical system that exceeds its function as a tool and becomes, at once, infrastructure, environment, system of power and architecture of dependence. A technology becomes “total” when it cuts across several dimensions of collective existence — economic, political, military, informational, social, cognitive — and progressively blurs the distinction between its civilian and strategic uses. Its power lies in this capacity for integration: it organises the very conditions under which individuals, institutions and states communicate, produce, decide and act. In Mhalla’s work, total technology thus constitutes an infrastructure of power: whoever owns it, controls it or sets the terms of access to it acquires a structural capacity to organise dependencies and balances of force.

First public appearance — 18 October 2022, Le Grand Continent · La doctrine Musk : technopolitique d’un géant technologique ↗