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Mike Cooley

Spokesman Books | Mike Cooley

About Mike Cooley

About Mike Cooley

Michael Cooley was born in Tuam in the west of Ireland in 1934. He was educated at local Catholic schools and later studied engineering in the UK. In industry he specialised in engineering design and gained a PhD in computer-aided design.

Mike Cooley was national president of the Designers' Union in 1971 and a TUC delegate for many years. A design engineer for eighteen years, he was a founder member of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards' Committee and one of the authors of its Plan for Socially Useful Production.

He has lectured at universities in Australia, Europe and the United States. He has been a guest professor at the University of Bremen, and visiting professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He has written for a variety of publications world wide including the Guardian, the Listener and the New Statesman. He has produced over forty scientific papers and is author or joint author of eleven books in English and German and has contributed to some thirty-five more. His work has been translated into over twenty languages from Finnish to Japanese. He is an international authority on human-centred computer-based systems and in 1981 was joint winner of the $50,000 Alternative Nobel Prize, which he donated to the Lucas Combine Committee.

Mike Cooley has been chairman and director of several manufacturing companies in his capacity as director of technology of the Greater London Enterprise Board in the 1980s.
His book, Arhcitect or Bee? The Human Price of Technology was re-published in 2016 and Delinquent Genius: The Strange Affair of Man and His Technology, written in 2008, was published in 2018 by Spokesman.

<span style='font-size: 14px;'>The Search for Alternatives</span>The Search for Alternatives
Liberating Human Imagination
A Mike Cooley Reader

By Mike Cooley

Foreword by John Palmer
Introduction by Karamjit S Gill

"we have become far too smart scientifically to survive much longer without wisdom"
Mike Cooley, The Myth of the Moral Neutrality of Technology

"The thrust of Mike Cooley's human society focused analysis has a striking parallel in the rapidly growing world-wide movement - led by young people - against climate change and for radical, green policies in all the major aspects of our economic, social and individual lives to counteract it. It is a development profoundly welcomed by him as the climate change threat to our planet and its people looms ever larger. In a sustainable world economy, the values and goals of Michael Cooley's work on human centred technology are sure to be reflected."
John Palmer

"Through his historical insights into the evolution of digital technology, Mike Cooley provides a stimulating narrative for understanding the impacts and implications of the new digital technologies of machine intelligence and automation ... Cooley's main concern is the misuse of technology, which can amongst other things create a frantic work tempo for some and the dole queue for others. Although humans with their skill and ingenuity were able to create technological change from the early stages to the advance of artificial intelligence, the society which has given birth to them tends to fail to keep pace."
Karamjit S Gill




Price: £11.99

202 Pages | Paperback
ISBN 978 085124 8851


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Delinquent Genius - The Strange Affair of Man and His Technology</span>Delinquent Genius - The Strange Affair of Man and His Technology
By Mike Cooley

"Delinquent Genius is simply brimming with insights. It traces the sources of technology and its application. It is, above all else, a brilliant account of a dangerous hubris which can lead to that which is instrumental becoming a source, a dangerous source of domination, of passive rather than active existence...

I believe the publication of this book must be seen as an invaluable contribution. What is particularly moving in it is that it takes all of these issues that have been raised in different fora, and in different ways and locates them in a biographical experience of a brilliant scholar. There is something immensely hopeful in this, the sheer power that comes from retaining one’s early curiosity, harvesting it through scholarship, and delivering it for the benefit of mankind."

Michael D. Higgins
President of Ireland

Mike Cooley has an international reputation as an activist, engineer and academic. He received the Right Livelihood Award (‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) ‘for designing and promoting the theory and practice of human-centred, socially useful production’. He was centrally involved in developing ‘The Lucas Plan’ and has been a guest professor at universities throughout the world, debating and lecturing in German and English. His previous work, Architect or Bee?, has been translated into six languages, most recently Chinese.

Price: £11.99

248 Pages | Paperback
ISBN 978 085124 8783


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<span style='font-size: 14px;'>Architect or Bee?</span>Architect or Bee?
The Human Price of Technology

By Mike Cooley, Foreword by Frances O'Grady

'A bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of its cells; but what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is namely this. The architect will construct in his imagination that which he will ultimately erect in reality. At the end of every labour process, we get that which existed in the consciousness of the labourer at its commencement.'
Karl Marx, Kapital

Mike Cooley's pioneering introduction to socially useful production and human-centred manufacturing systems, with a new foreword by the General Secretary of the TUC, herself an advocate of the lessons of the Lucas Plan for alternative production priorities. Years ahead of its time, Architect or Bee? is essential reading for all those seeking a democratic alternative to the politics of austerity.

'Welcome new edition of a wonderful book' - Frances O'Grady, TUC General Secretary

'Challenges the power of the machine' - New Society

'Essential reading' - New Statesman

Reviews
Mike Davis - Chartist, Jan/Feb 2017


Price: £10.99

194 pages | Paperback
ISBN: 978 0 85124 8493


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Spokesman Books | Mike Cooley

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