Technology Networks
Discussion
Adrian Smith:
"Metropolitan local authorities under the control of the Left of the Labour Party in the early 1980s were supportive towards socially useful production. Some provided space for community workshops. Activity at the Greater London Council in the form of its Technology Networks was the most intensive in this respect; though other workshops included the Unit for the Development of Alternative Products (UDAP) in Coventry and the Sheffield Centre for Product Development and Technological Resources (SCEPTRE).
3.1 Establishing the Technology Networks
The Labour Party manifesto for the GLC elections in 1981 included the following commitment:
Groups of workers such as the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards Committee have, with the support of the Labour Party, began to develop ideas on alternative production – using technologies which interact with human skills; making goods which are conducive to human health and welfare; working in ways which conserve, rather than waste, resources. We believe that these initiatives – which constitute a fundamental rejection of the values inherent in capitalist production – must be supported by a Labour GLC. We shall therefore be prepared to assist groups of workers seeking to develop alternative forms of production, with finance, with premises, or in other ways.” (Labour Manifesto, Greater London elections, 1981, quoted in Mole and Elliott 1987, 81)
Once in office, council leaders created the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) to implement proactive economic policies aimed at fighting unemployment and revitalising industry, including through worker and community initiative (Eastall 1989). [1] The alternative plan was neither dedicated to community workshops nor socially useful production, but nevertheless provided an institutional space as well as political and economic resources for workshop activists. GLEB had an annual budget of £32 million. Given the Left political orientation of the council, GLEB’s enterprise agreements and funds sought worker involvement and favoured co-operative forms of business development (Greater London Enterprise Board 1984b; Murray 1985).
Mike Cooley was hired as Technology Director for GLEB. Sacked by Lucas Aerospace, whose management rejected outright the worker’s plan for their company, Mike’s new position at GLEB provided a platform for him and the movement to continue to promote ideas and activity in socially useful production. Mike’s team, drawn from the movement, created five Technology Networks with a GLEB budget of £4 million. Each provided facilities for prototyping socially useful products. Thames Technet was based in the South East of London, and the London Innovation Network (LIN) in the North East. The others were London Energy and Employment Network (LEEN), the London New Technology Network (LNTN), and Transnet (focusing on transport).
All workshops provided physical spaces, access to shared machine tools, and assistance from technical staff to local communities, workers, and co-operative enterprises. Attempts were made to recruit staff who “appreciate the tacit knowledge of local residents and workers” (Greater London Enterprise Board 1984a) (12). Workshops were governed by representatives of local communities, trade unions, tenants groups, and academia (Cooley 1985).
3.2 Participatory prototyping
Seeking to break down barriers between workshop staff and local communities, Network sites were sought away from “alienating” polytechnic campuses. The workshops provided walk-in venues open to anyone. Problem-focused training was linked to issues affecting the community. For example, training at LNTN explored how communities could use ICT networks to share information; augment their knowledge through expert systems; and, co-ordinate more effectively. A women’s co-operative was established to address gender bias in the microelectronics sector. Training was provided for groups from developing countries as part of the GLC’s Third World Information Network (whose procurement arm went on to pioneer Fair Trade systems).
Sharing of knowledge and prototypes was encouraged through a “product bank’.
Each centre contributes a product-bank of innovations patented by the networks for use by working people and for socially useful purposes. Machine-banks, consisting of second-hand machinery refurbished as part of a training programme, will be available for use by client enterprises (Greater London Enterprise Board 1984a) (12) Profit-making enterprises paid royalties on non-exclusively licensed products. This contributed to Network running costs and cross-subsidised the socially useful mission. Other sources of revenue came from the public sector, through provision of useful products and services, and returns from the spin-off development of co-operative enterprises under the wider activities of GLEB.
Successful prototypes were developed:
As a result of all these activities, a product bank has now been built up containing some 1500 products at various stages of development, from the idea or concept to prototypes to ideas in production. The product bank is exciting, especially the way it has been developed. Special-interest groups concerned about energy conservation have been able to develop product ranges. The disabled have shown great creativity not only in thinking up alternative products for themselves, but in designing and, in many cases, making them (Cooley 1987) (146)
One example from the energy domain was user-friendly, electronic controllers designed to improve energy efficiency. The controllers were fitted to large refrigerators at the GLC headquarters. However, refrigerator manufacturers resisted ideas about wider commercialisation. The design reduced the need for lucrative after-sales servicing contracts. Marketing challenges like these could prove intractable. Some prototypes, including IT manufacture, and toys for schools, did go into successful local manufacture. Others, such as an electric bicycle, found developers and investors in other countries, including Germany and Italy. However, for many prototypes, even where a commercial market looked promising, the investment required to move into manufacturing was often beyond the means of GLEB, and financial institutions were either not interested or refused to locate production in London (Palmer 1986; Rustin 1986).
3.3 Commercial pressures
Recognising the difficulty of developing products so directly, the Product Bank idea was adapted along commercial lines. A Technology Exchange was created that matched prototype designs to firms seeking new products or processes. This technology transfer service opened up to commercial technology offers. Learning from the limitations of Lucas and GLEB Technology Networks, and involving people from both initiatives, the Technology Exchange provided catalogues and exhibitions to subscribers internationally. It won support from the European Community and UNIDO. According to Brian Padgett from the Exchange, the problem with the Lucas Plan and Networks was that many viable prototypes and designs were frustrated by dependency upon unsympathetic manufacturers and investors (interview, 07/10/2013). The Exchange opened things up to a wider network of potential developers, but also span off in a very commercial direction. It operated until 2002.
Technology Exchange was deemed a success amongst the business-oriented participants in the Technology Networks. GLEB provided office space to a UK appropriate technology programme under the auspices of ITDG. The latter actively promoted a business-oriented approach. [2] They brought in business leaders and expertise, such as John Davis from Shell, and linked to their interest in small enterprises (Davis & Bollard 1986; McRobie 1981). In contrast to more radical aspirations, the business emphasis rested unsurprisingly in using workshop facilities to develop small enterprises (Palmer 1986).
Some enterprises clearly had socially useful orientations. Brass Tacks, for example, repaired and reconditioned furniture and domestic appliances for distribution to disadvantaged households. The Technology Networks helped Brass Tacks to design and manufacture replacement components on a bespoke basis.
Brian Padgett recalled other Network activities:
We introduced a waste paper recycling activity producing art papers and the low-cost injection mould-making business which later transferred to commercial premises. We also introduced a polymer stamp making system, using a UV hardening process, coupled to an affordable rotary label printer, a recycling system for sheet glass offcuts using a thermal sagging technique, etc. etc. All of these were very much in the area of Socially Useful Products but aimed at small start-ups with low capital cost. (personal correspondence, 5th November 2013)
Nevertheless, investment at scale remained difficult.
3.4 Technological agit prop and social mobilisation
A different, more radical framing sought to direct workshop activity towards addressing political and economic issues, including the difficulties under capitalism of redirecting investment for social use value (cf. exchange value). In some cases, activism took the form of “technological agit prop’, in which prototyping technologies remained a focal activity, but were presented as a catalysing device for mobilisation around associated political, economic and social issues (Cooley 1987). So, for example, projects involving new microelectronics would be encouraged to debate the threats of automation, and the skill-enhancing possibilities of more human-centred shaping of new technologies. Practical difficulties for investment in the latter provided a material critique of capitalist innovation (cf. Braverman 1974; Noble 1979) as well as demonstrating through practical example the possibilities for more socially useful alternatives.
Developing prototypes and enterprises in workshops was all well and good, but more radical activists considered commercial investment dependencies to result in participants working as bees for capital, rather than architects of their own economic activity. A more radical agenda sought in the workshops a mobilisation of popular activity for a fuller and deeper transformation towards socially useful production.
Reflecting from their position in popular planning at the GLC, Maureen Mackintosh and Hilary Wainwright wrote:
GLEB, for its part, put an increasing emphasis on commercial skills and product development, worried that money might be wasted, and the networks not survive, if products were not produced and marketed fast enough. They saw the products themselves as providing a sort of “technological agitprop” capable of stimulating a further input by example. They argued that such practical demonstrations of the potential for socially useful job creation had to take priority over open-ended outreach work…
Network staff, members, and users, however, take a more complex view than this. They acknowledge the importance of commercial skills, and having a plan of development of the networks. But they see on the whole a too early concentration on new products as counterproductive. What GLEB calls “outreach’, they see as the essence of networking, and the factor which can in the end generate real innovations. While recognising the tensions, they [network staff] see them as creative: the only way to democratise inputs to technological development.” (Mackintosh & Wainwright 1987) (212-213)
Starting in 1983, LEEN was one of the first workshops to manifest prototyping-mobilisation issues. As various community, tenant, and energy organisations became involved in the network, bringing different experiences, so the focus of the workshop opened up.
As Veronica Mole and Dave Elliott explained:
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)
Strategy shifted towards building a campaign, with local authority support, that would put pressure on central government to invest in existing energy conservation technologies addressing community needs (London Energy and Employment Network 1986). Susie Parsons from LEEN explained how, “Partly in light of these problems, many people involved in the technology networks quickly came to the conclusion that they had other useful roles besides product development. One of these was the use of existing technology to provide services to people, and helping people to understand and use existing technology more effectively.” (Mackintosh & Wainwright 1987) (208-209). Mobilising groups under a “Right to Warmth” campaign, LEEN provided energy audit and advice services for people, which included developing convenient energy monitoring and modelling devices, and assembling packages of energy conserving technologies for installation in homes. The campaign drew attention to particular needs in apartment blocks, and organised community energy initiatives aimed at job creation through community energy co-operatives (Greater London Enterprise Board 1984a).
The innovative activity here was more about new forms of political organisation than socially useful prototyping. The experience at LEEN illustrated, for example, how householders had tacit knowledge about the thermal performance of their homes. Monitoring expertise developed at LEEN codified into a technically valid form (acceptable to public authorities) something that householders already knew: their homes were damp, cold, and inadequately heated at great cost. Conversely, it required the knowledge and skills of tenants associations, community organisers, and the households themselves to mobilise a political campaign to win the public funds for the requisite technical remediation. All were mobilised through the process, but it is worth emphasising how the technical experts would not have been able to implement their techniques and devices without the power of the tenants’ campaigns. The workshop provided a space through which a combination of practical reasoning, technical expertise, and political linkages could be mobilised.
Community workshops elsewhere were on a similar journey. Brian Lowe at UDAP in Coventry explained how, The original relatively simple aims of establishing technical feasibility of alternative products has widened to encompass a much broader activity. The Unit has now become absorbed into and became a distinct but constituent part of the popular planning movement. (Lowe 1985, 68)
This more radical purpose was at odds with more business-oriented interests in Technology Networks. Tensions emerged between those looking to the development of revenue through commercialisation of prototypes and services, a view associated with GLEB boards overseeing the networks, and the popular planners seeking to mobilise the networks for socialist transformation.
3.5 Innovation cultures
The challenges to realising a more politically oriented form of participatory design ran deep. “Constructing an open door to planning and decision making procedures is not enough” (Linn 1987) (116). The networks, and the resources for design, prototyping, and production development needed to be culturally as well as physically accessible to Londoners. Materially speaking, that meant transcending the daily demands on peoples’ energy and time by providing them with the resources to participate when they wanted, and on their terms. Culturally, it meant the gradual process of building more egalitarian relationships that crossed lines of expertise, class, race and gender. Staying physically open during evenings and weekends was helpful, but enabling specific groups to use workshops required arrangements thought through carefully with those groups (such as, say, some women, particularly where religious or ethnic backgrounds restricted free association with men).
Workshop practices, attitudes and expectations needed open reflection to overcome unintended exclusions. 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 practicalities of bringing diverse communities together with engineers, machinists, and designers proved considerable. As Mary Moore put it, “You will not find this group coming together naturally after a CND [3] demonstration or a football match, for a quick drink or an exchange of ideas” (quoted in (Mackintosh & Wainwright 1987) (214). Democratising decisions involves the negotiation and resolution of conflicts, between different groups of workers, between producers and consumers, between professionalised expertise and grassroots knowledge, and across other divisions including class, gender and race (Blackburn et al. 1982).
Some Networks did attend to the cultures of innovation and developed more inclusive and horizontal practices (Clark 1983). However, the Networks alone could not resolve deep-seated divisions in society. Pam Linn at ThamesNet described vividly, for example, the intimidating power relations in play when an unemployed grassroots innovator met the executives of a large manufacturer suspected of pirating his design for safety lighting (Linn 1987). That said, participating in workshops could be and was transformative for many people.
3.6 The decline of Technology Networks
Methodologies developed and fine-tuned in the workshops provided early experience in practices of participatory design and community development that went on to be useful in other areas. But the opportunity to progress further in Technology Networks was short-lived. Hostile to radical local authorities, the Conservative central government abolished the GLC in 1986. The Thatcher government curtailed local government powers and budgets over economic planning more generally. In the polytechnics too, reductions in funding and a harsher environment eroded academic-activist alliances. Anti-trade union legislation and the decline of unionised manufacturing sectors also weakened alternative possibilities.
Some community workshop initiatives struggled on with reduced support, but those that did had increasingly to adapt to a commercial logic, such as the Technology Exchange, and training activities that aligned service provision to the needs of private enterprise and capital (Eastall 1989). Socially useful ideals for demystifying new technology (with a view to empowered democratic participation) were dropped. The provision of skilled operatives for firms could be inserted more readily into the spirit of enterprise that Thatcherism was trying to cultivate.
GLEB’s Networks proved to be the high water mark for the movement for socially useful production. The experience of the workshops and movements was ultimately one of being overwhelmed and appropriated by more powerful political and economic forces (culminating in our present neo-liberal hegemony). The more challenging attempts at social shaping were closed down, such as direct democratic control of the technology development process, 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 (Asaro 2000). Activists tired, or moved on.
Nevertheless, the movement had pointed to the social processes that shape technology, and insisted through the workshops that people have a right to participate in those shaping processes. What was practiced was a critique of naturalising views amongst political and economic elites about the apparent autonomy and neutrality of technological change. In so doing, activists anticipated ideas and analysis that was to consolidate into science and technology studies and participatory design over the coming years." (http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-5-shared-machine-shops/peer-reviewed-articles/technology-networks-for-socially-useful-production/)
Source
* Article: Technology Networks for Socially Useful Production. By Adrian Smith. Journal of Peer Production, · Issue #5: Shared Machine Shop, 2014