Mike Cooley (1934-2020)
Mike Cooley was an aerospace design engineer and shop steward at Lucas Aerospace, one of the authors and best-known advocates of the lucas plan, and later technology director of the Greater London Enterprise Board, where he set up the technology networks london. Lucas sacked him in 1981, the year he received the Right Livelihood Award "for designing and promoting the theory and practice of human-centred, socially useful production". (rightlivelihood.org)
He coined the phrase "human-centred systems" in Architect or Bee? (1980), writing about the move in his own trade from the drawing board to computer-aided design. The phrase meant systems that keep or enlarge human skill where technology tends to wear it away. The book's title comes from Marx's remark that the worst architect differs from the best bee because the architect builds the structure in imagination first. He went on to lead the EU's ESPRIT project 1217 on a human-centred manufacturing system, and he was the founding chair of the journal AI & Society, whose editors trace its ethos to the Lucas Plan. (en.wikipedia.org) ; doi.org)
His thought drew on engineering practice, trade-union organising, Marx's account of labour, and the idea of tacit knowledge, the skill people have but cannot fully write down. He warned against turning "human judgement into calculation", which in his view made the person "an appendage of the machine". (doi.org)
He matters to Dark discourse because the phrase he coined is the ancestor, in name at least, of the human-centred design James criticises; technology networks london traces what happened to it in between.
History and sources. Created by the research session of 27 October 2026 (Trail 2026-10-27) from the Right Livelihood Award page, the Wikipedia article (for the coinage and the ESPRIT project, cross-checked against the Right Livelihood page) and the AI & Society tribute (search text only). Architect or Bee? itself has not been read. Stated.
Related: lucas plan, technology networks london, Dark discourse
- Dark discourse
- The Lucas Plan (1976): skilled insiders who named the discourse and planned their way out
- Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee, Corporate Plan (1976)
- Technology Networks (London, 1983-86): public workshops for socially useful production, and how their methods outlived their purpose