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<p><b><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://youtu.be/M5SM40ry6vQ">Minor
Compositions Podcast Episode 40 Utopia in the Factory?</a></b><br>
<br>
<img moz-do-not-send="false"
src="cid:part1.MUOwex65.MPygDBY0@gmail.com" alt="" width="1280"
height="720"></p>
<p><br>
<i>Discussion with Rhiannon Firth & John Preston on their new
book </i>Utopia in the Factory. Prefigurative Knowledge Against
Cybernetics<br>
<br>
There’s long been this seductive idea that automation, AI, and
robotics might finally deliver us into a kind of post-work utopia.
You can find it everywhere, from Silicon Valley pitch decks to
certain corners of the radical left. The story goes something like
this: in the age of “Industry 4.0,” digital manufacturing will
allow for seamless, frictionless production. Factories without
workers –“lights-out” facilities where machines run the show –
become the emblem of a capitalist cybertopia. And then, on the
other side, there’s the more radical dream: that these same
technologies might be the conditions for Fully Automated Luxury
Communism – a reimagined Marxist vision where automation liberates
humanity from labour, ushering in lives of collective leisure and
abundance. Still others turn back to cybernetics, seeing in the
feedback loops of AI, networks, and digital communication new ways
to organize – an anarchist cybernetics for the 21st century. But
the book we’re discussing this episode, <i>Utopia in the Factory.
Prefigurative Knowledge Against Cybernetics</i> by Rhiannon
Firth and John Preston, asks us to pause. It questions that
technological optimism, not just in its capitalist manifestations,
but in its radical appropriations too. What happens when we start
to see automation and cybernetics not as tools of liberation, but
as systems that can’t quite grasp the messy, tacit, and creative
dimensions of human work and cooperation? Through a close critique
of automation, AI, and the cybernetic paradigm, they argue that
these technologies can never fully capture what makes human making
and organizing meaningful. Instead they show, through interviews
with workers, makers, and activists, that autonomy, creativity,
and desire – those spontaneous, often hobbyist forms of
collaboration – remain essential. These are the forms of life and
labour that resist being coded, automated, or optimized. And
perhaps, they suggest, it’s in these spaces – of hobbying,
tinkering, and collective improvisation – that other futures begin
to take shape.<br>
<br>
Also available on all the usual podcast platforms</p>
<p><b>Bio</b>: Rhiannon Firth is Lecturer in Sociology of Education
at the Institute of Education, University College London. She is
interested in anti-authoritarian organising within, against and
beyond the crises of capitalism. Her research focuses on
grassroots utopias, mutual aid and the pedagogical and
prefigurative practices of radical social movements.<br>
<br>
John Preston is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex.
He has pioneered an original stream of research in the sociology
of disasters and existential threats. His work also explores the
sociology of education and, most recently, skills and AI.<br>
<br>
For more on the book:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-87132-0">https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-87132-0</a><br>
<br>
Intro / outro music: “Sucked Out Chucked Out 1” by The Ex, from
“The Dignity of Labour”</p>
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Linktree of all our stuff: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://linktr.ee/minorcompositions">https://linktr.ee/minorcompositions</a></pre>
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