Adrian Smith - Technology Networks for socially useful production
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Adrian Smith - Technology Networks for socially useful production
- 1. Technology networks for socially useful production Adrian Smith SPRU, University of Sussex
- 2. In London in 1982 … • Socialist GLC’s Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) • Co-operative enterprises, industrial democracy and socially useful production • Rescuing manufacturing decline and jobs • Five Technology Networks: community-based workshops • Combining “untapped skill, creativity and sheer enthusiasm” in local communities with the “reservoir of scientific and innovation knowledge” in London’s polytechnics: • LIN: London Innovation Network • LNTN: London New Technology Network • LEEN: London Energy & Employment Network • Thames Technet • LTTN: London Transport Technology Network • Linked to movement on left for socially useful production
- 3. In the Technology Networks … • Access to tools, expertise, and training – design, manufacturing tools, ICT • Walk-in workshops open to anyone – sited away from ‘alienating’ polytechnics • Examples: women’s computing co-operative, Brass Tacks (a white goods refurbishment co- op), electric bike, disability devices, play equipment, heat pumps, wind turbines, fuel poverty campaign, road-rail bus and transport campaigns … • Product Bank for sharing designs and prototypes developed in the workshops (over 1,500 deposited) • Cultivating participatory design methods, prototyping and product development, mobilising alliances and networks, creating new enterprises, training and skills
- 4. The movement for socially useful production • In opening design, prototyping and production to popular participation sought to build, reinforce and extend solidarities • Provides a practical underpinning to an alternative economic strategy to the right (what became neo- liberalism) • Arms conversion, alternative technology • Industrial democracy & community participation • Human-centred, skill enhancing new technology • Unusual & uneasy alliances: peace, community activism, environmentalists, new left, feminism – originating from skilled, craft-based workers at Lucas Aerospace
- 5. Working it out in Technology Networks … • Open doors is only the start – need good community development – social mobilisation, e.g. LEEN • Workshops are not insulated from divisions in wider social world – participatory design techniques, e.g. LIN • Prototyping for training and enterprise cf. technological agit prop for awareness and mobilisation • Moving from prototyping into manufacture requires control over capital • Socially useful production needed favourable political economies cf. new right and old left • Importance of radical impulse for new practices – spaces where the rules are different and alternative cultures are possible
- 6. Makerspaces: learning with history? • Makerspaces, FabLabs and Hackerspaces • Responding to structural changes - technical, cultural, social, economic, political – but power to shape them? • Different world now – but some fundamentals remain the same? • Varied roles that prototyping can play • Challenges involved in creating new social relations in workshops different to the outside world • Connecting grounded practices of making to big forces of political economy and social movements • How to orientate maker (material) culture to sustainable developments?
- 7. More details … • You Tube: Lucas Plan – Open University documentary from 1978 • Wainwright and Elliott, The Lucas Plan, 1982 • Socially useful production, STEPS Working Paper 58, 2014 • Technology Networks for Socially Useful Production, Journal of Peer Production, Issue 5, 2014 • The Lucas Plan: what can it tell us about democratising technology today? The Guardian, Pollitical Science blog, 22 January 2014 • Tooling up: civic visions, FabLabs and grassroots innovation, The Guardian, Political Science blog, 4 April 2015 • a.g.smith@sussex.ac.uk @smithadrianpaul
- 8. The GLEB philosophy …
- 9. The movement for socially useful production • Restructuring of capital, new technology, manufacturing relocation, flexible specialisation • Workers’ alternative industrial strategies, beginning with Lucas Plan 1976: Mike Cooley – skills, needs, prototyping and tech agit prop • Socially useful production – not just jobs • Arms conversion, alternative technology • Industrial democracy & community participation • Human-centred, skill enhancing technology • Popular planning and alternative economic strategy • Unusual & uneasy alliances: peace, community activism, environmentalists, left, feminism
Notes de l'éditeur
- Adrian Smith – trained in metalwork and then mechanical engineering; became interested in politics of technology and innovation. Ended up at SPRU doing a PhD and doing contract research ever since, mainly on technology, society and sustainable development. Recent years – grassroots innovation. Lucas Plan study an offshoot of that, and for relevant for ongoing research into makerspaces and maker culture Structure of talk is to begin with description of technology networks, which were an expression of a broader movement for socially useful production. Then look at that broader movement in order to understand how technology networks were framed and the different expectations and commitments towards them Consider some of the tensions and issues arising in these workshops, and their demise Reflect on what it means today, for makerspaces, and more broadly through discussion with you/audience
- Alliances struck with unions and design researchers in Scandinavia (technology agreements, human-centred new technologies) ESPRIT project - interdisciplinarity
- Decline of SUP – government rejected it, and did managements, but so too did pinnacle of union hierarchies. It was found that the rationale for the establishment of the networks, the promotion of alternative products and the provision of access to workshop and technical facilities leading to socially- useful employment was not the main problem regarding energy related issues discovered by LEEN. In the field of energy at least at the local level the main factor is not the lack of socially-useful technologies; rather the technology exists, but what is required is the political, institutional and financial commitment to the redistribution of resources that would allow the implementation of these technologies (Mole & Elliott 1987, 87) GLEB appointed Boards overseeing the networks were accused of having “employed high numbers of technically experienced trade-union men whose language, bureaucratic ways of working and emphasis on the product rather then the community process act to exclude even technically qualified women” (Linn 1987 121)
- the varied roles that prototyping can play: to generate products, to generate critical debate, to generate communities – and which can be in tension with one another amongst workshops participants, managers and users the challenges involved in creating in workshops social relations that are different to the outside world – the idea that anyone can make (almost) anything in a well-intended, free wheeling, all welcome kind of way (see Gershenfeld or Diez), when in practice you need to actively work at structural disadvantages of class, gender, ethnicity, education, opportunity that exist in the wider society Making something socially useful out of making requires attention to political economy (beyond the social value of personal realisation, which should not be underestimated)
- the varied roles that prototyping can play: to generate products, to generate critical debate, to generate communities – and which can be in tension with one another amongst workshops participants, managers and users the challenges involved in creating in workshops social relations that are different to the outside world – the idea that anyone can make (almost) anything in a well-intended, free wheeling, all welcome kind of way (see Gershenfeld or Diez), when in practice you need to actively work at structural disadvantages of class, gender, ethnicity, education, opportunity that exist in the wider society Making something socially useful out of making requires attention to political economy (beyond the social value of personal realisation, which should not be underestimated)
- Alliances struck with unions and design researchers in Scandinavia (technology agreements, human-centred new technologies) ESPRIT project - interdisciplinarity