Rather, it extends itself into time itself, using the latest mental and physical technologies to colonize both the past and the future. Indeed, the whole point of McHale's argument is to refuse the distinction between mental and physical. When McHale heads into each technological extreme, he does not leave the social world behind. On the contrary, he does so to describe the contemporary state of social life. He insists that it makes just as much sense to treat machine systems as human as it is to treat human bodies as machines.
Physical technology is social technology.
It is not that social life deploys various technologies to sustain itself or that social life can be found within technological space. Rather, social life can only reside in prosthetic accessories. Without being, through specialization, a biological amputee, he attaches all sorts of prosthetic devices to his limbs.