Mike Cooley (engineer)

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Mike Cooley (Michael Joseph Edward Cooley) (1934–2020) was an Irish-born engineer, writer, and trade union leader who explored how technology affects people. He is best known for the Lucas Plan in the late 1970s, a push to convert weapons production at Lucas Aerospace into socially useful civilian goods to save jobs and benefit society. He described the idea of “human-centred systems” and “socially useful production” as guiding principles for technology. In 1981 he received the Right Livelihood Award for designing and promoting these ideas.

Cooley worked as a designer and leader in CAD (computer-aided design). He earned a PhD in CAD from North East London Polytechnic and served as a visiting professor at UMIST. After Lucas, he became Technology Director of the Greater London Council and, with Ken Livingstone, founded the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB) in 1982 to help regenerate London industry. GLEB later became Greater London Enterprise (GLE). He also helped establish the International Research Institute in Human Centred Systems and was the founding president of AI & Society.

His writings include Architect or Bee? (1980), which argues for organizing technology to serve human needs and social good, and Delinquent Genius (1992), about the relationship between people and technology. He published many papers, lectured worldwide, and his work influenced debates on how automation and science should serve society.

Born in Tuam, Cooley started as an apprentice welder and fitter, studied engineering in Bremen, worked in Zurich, then moved to London in 1957 and joined Lucas Aerospace in 1962. He married Shirley Pullen in 1961 and had two children. He died in Slough, England, on 4 September 2020, aged 86.

His legacy includes a large archive donated to Waterford Institute of Technology, and the IN SYTE-Cooley Research Lab at SETU Waterford, established in 2021. In 2025, SETU launched the Professor Mike Cooley Award to honor work that preserves and shares his ideas.