This project investigates how empirical and historical planning experiments are shaped and constrained by the technologies available for economic calculation, coordination, and control. Rather than treating planning as a purely theoretical or institutional problem (Groos& Sorg Eds. 2025), the project examines planning as it was actually practised, mediated by concrete technologies such as early input–output (I-O) tables, statistical systems, cybernetic models, analogue and early digital computing, and logistics architectures developed in both civilian and crisis contexts.

The research convenes an interdisciplinary group of five: a Principal Investigator (political economist), a Post-Doc researcher (critical technologist), two PhD researchers (economic calculation and ecological political economy) and a graduate statistician/behavioural economist. Together we will produce comparative “planning dossiers” examining key empirical and historical planning episodes (e.g.20th century economic planning, wartime planned economies, early cybernetic experiments). Each dossier analyses the interaction between ownership regimes, economic calculation models, and technological capacities inspired by works like Beer's 1972, Devine's 1989; Cockshott& Cottrell's 1993; Medina's 2011 Morozov's n.d,nd.,2026).

The project culminates in a closed intensive workshop to develop a shared framework organised around: (1) ownership regimes (private, collected, socialised), (2) calculation debate (epistemic limits; computational methods; optimisation vs cybernetics; accounting systems; size of I-O matrices), (3) coordination (information/knowledge asymmetries; agency problems; intersectoral linkages), (4) control and governance (centralised, democratic, isegoric; monitoring and feedback systems), (5) ecological feasibility and resilience (material constraints; crisis capacity), and (6) growth and reproduction paths (innovation, distribution, social reproduction). The aim is to generate empirically grounded concepts that inform contemporary debates on digitalisation, AI, and renewed interest in planning (Ban 2024; Dapprich 2024; Durand et al. 2024).

The project rejects both technological determinism and abstract theory detached from practice. ISRF funding functions as seed support, enabling collective work that would not be supported by conventional disciplinary funding schemes(e.g.Horizon Cluster 2/4, ESRC,Leverhulme).