{"id":1641,"date":"2025-10-28T19:25:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T19:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/?p=1641"},"modified":"2025-10-28T19:27:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T19:27:40","slug":"utopia-in-the-factory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/?p=1641","title":{"rendered":"Utopia in the Factory?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 40 Utopia in the Factory?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Utopia in the Factory?\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M5SM40ry6vQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Discussion with Rhiannon Firth &amp; John Preston on their new book <\/em>Utopia in the Factory. Prefigurative Knowledge Against Cybernetics<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s 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 \u201cIndustry 4.0,\u201d digital manufacturing will allow for seamless, frictionless production. Factories without workers \u2013\u201clights-out\u201d facilities where machines run the show \u2013 become the emblem of a capitalist cybertopia. And then, on the other side, there\u2019s the more radical dream: that these same technologies might be the conditions for Fully Automated Luxury Communism \u2013 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 \u2013 an anarchist cybernetics for the 21st century. But the book we\u2019re 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\u2019t 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 \u2013 those spontaneous, often hobbyist forms of collaboration \u2013 remain essential. These are the forms of life and labour that resist being coded, automated, or optimized. And perhaps, they suggest, it\u2019s in these spaces \u2013 of hobbying, tinkering, and collective improvisation \u2013 that other futures begin to take shape.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Bio: 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>For more on the <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/book\/10.1007\/978-3-031-87132-0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">book<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Intro \/ outro music: \u201cSucked Out Chucked Out 1\u201d by The Ex, from \u201cThe Dignity of Labour\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 40 Utopia in the Factory? Discussion with Rhiannon Firth &amp; John Preston on their new book Utopia in the Factory. Prefigurative Knowledge Against Cybernetics There\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1641"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1644,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1641\/revisions\/1644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minorcompositions.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}