Across a variety of political ideologies, technologies such as AI and robotics and theories/practices such as cybernetics are expected to lead to a utopian future. In this chapter we set out the conceptual scaffolding which will act as a critique of this position in the theoretical and empirical chapters that follow. We define the concepts of Industry 4.0 and cybernetics and then turn to look at factories as potential utopias in socialist, capitalist, anarchist and fascist ideologies. Key concepts in this work are tacit knowledge and hobbying, which we define as playful, convivial yet purposive activities, critical pedagogy, and the prefigurative and utopian. We then present an overview of our methods and an outline of the book as a whole.