CYBER4.0 is a pseudonym for a large automotive manufacturer in the UK that uses Industry 4.0 techniques. Through interviews with workers at the automotive plant, the limitations and prefigurations arising from cybernetic manufacturing are considered. Tacit knowledge is illustrated through the ways in which workers relate to the physical sounds and intensities of the plant and their interactions with the materiality of manufacture. The workers conducted what we refer to as playful but purposive ‘hobbying’ which enabled them to produce results that were considered to be technically impossible. Tacit knowledge and hobbying, even in a private sector organisation, prefigure a socially transformative way of organising work and activity.