Technology Networks (London, 1983-86): public workshops for socially useful production, and how their methods outlived their purpose

Technology Networks were five community workshops funded by the Greater London Council through its Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) from 1983 until the council was abolished in 1986. Mike Cooley (Mike Cooley), sacked from Lucas Aerospace for his part in the lucas plan, was GLEB's technology director, and his team came from the same movement. This page belongs to the thread on convivial computation (Convivial technological futures) and to the audience part of Departure in place. It is worth setting beside Access Space and the Redundant Technology Initiative, MetaReciclagem and Community Memory and Resource One.

What they were

The workshops shared machine tools, technical advice and prototyping services, and were open to anyone who wanted to develop a socially useful product. Two served areas of London (Thames Technet in the south-east, the London Innovation Network in the north-east) and three served themes (energy, new technology, transport). They were governed by representatives of local communities, trade unions, tenants' groups and the polytechnics, sited away from campuses, and told to recruit staff who "appreciate the tacit knowledge of local residents and workers". People built electric bicycles, small wind turbines, disability aids, remanufactured products and play equipment, and set up community computer networks and a women's IT cooperative. GLEB had an annual budget of £32 million, of which the networks got £4 million. (Adrian Smith, 2014, grassrootsinnovations.wordpress.com)

Two details bear directly on the surplus-hardware line in this wiki. Each centre was to hold "machine-banks, consisting of second-hand machinery refurbished as part of a training programme", available to client enterprises. And prototypes went into an open "product bank" of designs patented by the networks "for use by working people"; profit-making firms paid royalties on non-exclusive licences, which helped pay for the workshops. (GLEB's 1984 booklet, quoted by Smith 2014, same URL)

How they ended

"Without funds and political support, the Technology Networks declined." The Thatcher government abolished the council in 1986 and cut local powers over economic planning; polytechnic funding cuts and anti-union law eroded the alliances the workshops rested on. Smith also records tensions inside: between prototyping for business and "technological agit prop" for political organising, and between professional, written-down expertise and the tacit knowledge of community participants. (Smith 2014, same URL)

What happened to the methods

Smith's judgement is that the more demanding aims, such as direct democratic control of how technology is developed, "were closed down", while "other elements were co-opted and reconfigured by capital, such as ideas, methodology, and artefacts for flexible specialisation and user-centred design in manufacturing". He quotes the Danish researcher Lauge Rasmussen looking back: later work "focused on the micro-level only. The societal perspective of the Lucas Workers' Plan or the attempts made by Greater London Council ... get lost." (Smith 2014, same URL)

Peter Asaro's history of participatory design traces how that happened (asaro 2000 participatory design). Two traditions grew separately. One began in 1970 when the Norwegian Computing Centre worked with the iron and metal workers' union to give union officials their own knowledge of technology, and led through the Swedish-Danish UTOPIA project (1981) to participatory design. The other was IBM's Joint Application Design (1977), an extension of its business systems planning that involved users because that made design efficient. "Despite their differences, the approaches ultimately converged on a set of shared concerns and very similar practices", and the corporate restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s (Total Quality Management, business process re-engineering) used "the concepts of worker empowerment" and "the methods of user participation, to legitimate new political regimes within organizations". (peterasaro.org)

One detail from Asaro is striking. The first Scandinavian union projects were wary of having workers take part in design at all, partly because "the workers involved might become experts and join management thereby threatening union solidarity". (same URL)

My reading

The steer asked how "human-centred" lost its meaning between Cooley and IDEO. These sources suggest it was not emptied by a change of definition. The methods (workshops, mock-ups, involving the people who use a system) travelled intact, while the two things that gave them their point were left behind: the organised collective that decided what should be made, and the question of what should be produced at all. That is the same structure as James's Dark discourse, where human-centred design can express delight and trust but not harm to people who are not users. It also matches his own complaint on Writing from inside that the tech industry stripped agile of its communitarian origins. The early union fear that participating workers "might become experts and join management" is the same worry from the other side.

History and sources. Written by the research session of 27 October 2026 (Trail 2026-10-27). Smith's article was read in full (PDF); Asaro's article was read in part on his own site (sections on IBM, the Scandinavian projects and corporate restructuring). Source pages: smith 2014 technology networks, asaro 2000 participatory design. Stated: two sources, both secondary histories drawing on archives and participants.

Related: lucas plan, Mike Cooley, Access Space and the Redundant Technology Initiative, MetaReciclagem, Dark discourse, Convivial technological futures