This idea of it reintroducing the social back into the use of technology is really strong. In the whole idea of Backspace it seemed to be more than just an open access space.

I can't understand how one could approach these sorts of issues without having that inclusion because, on a purely practical level, I don't know how to do this stuff. I can do some of the other things around it, and I can certainly set a sense of space, or at least turn some wheels to make some things seem more possible than they possibly were without these activities going on.
The whole social thing is... I just like having people around anyway, that's the way I am, and I think that's an infectious state.

For someone who came to Backspace who would maybe otherwise be considered socially-challenged, found they were able to really grow and express themselves in a way that, certainly in a commercial sphere, they were unable to really commit to because they just felt beleaguered by the whole notion of 'performing'.

Which always tickled me because that was so often the criticism we had, that it was a crappy performance base. Well, you know, crappy things happen in it but it wasn't there to nurture good practice or something, it was just there as a platform for experimentation. Pretty much that's what happened most of the time. It was always chaotic and different day by day.

It seems like a really good example of the way that media labs of that kind can be run. There are other examples of media labs that have failed, that maybe haven't included that social aspect in the model.

Well the whole facing up to failure thing is something that obviously funded cultural experiment finds very difficult to phase, and very difficult to deal with.

Geert Lovink, who was another one of the principal protagonists of... at least an understanding and a stimulant to some of these spaces that exist across Europe, and certainly he's had a commentary and an early interaction with all of us in London. And he's actually expressed this quite a lot, as this notion of the failure of ideas, and I think the success of failure is being able to understand and actually take something from that and not be fearful of something ending. Which, of course, if you've got half a million pounds of funding behind you can all be rather embarrassing for those involved.
Again, that's another reason why I definitely navigated out of that space wherever it was possible.