Bruno Latour, Aramis, or the Love of Technology, PDF - Dss-edit.com

In 1976, on the other hand, it is composed of hundreds of membra dis;ecfa,each of which is evolving in terms of its own alliances and prohibitions.The variable-reluctance motor holds up, but not the stations on sidings; andnot the polystate. Matra sticks with it, but not Aeroport de Paris, which haslong since dropped the whole thing. Finally, in 1988, there's no longeranyone who can explain what constituted Aramis' unity, since it has beendismembered once again, since the teams have been disbanded and theresearch center destroyed, and since there's talk of "spillover": the variable-reluctancemotor is now isolated, abstracted from the whole, savedfrom the shipwreck to become one of the positive elements of Aramisendowed retrospectively with a life of its own. "At least there was themotorization-a great technological success, even if it's a little costly andhasn't yet found clients."To count these successive states, a very peculiar arithmetic is required,since each element, by virtue of the pressure brought to bear on it,can become either an autonomous element, or everything, or nothing,either the component or the recognizable part of a whole. The question ofhow many elements compose a technological system cannot be answeredby ordinary arithmetic. When there are breakdowns, accidents, strikes, thecomponents separate into individuals and proliferate; then, when the systemstarts up again, they disappear, and literally do not count any longer.The lack of flexibility of the space shuttle Challenger's O-rings after a coldwave became apparent only after the explosion-from that point on, it wasnecessary to reckon with cold temperatures. * The lack of flexibility of themaintenance-shop workers in the Paris metro after an action by the CGT[Confederation Generale du Travail, a labor union] became apparent onlyafter the long strike in 1988-from that point on, the workers had to bereckoned with. Before the catastrophe, didn't it ever get cold at CapeKennedy? Before the strike, weren't there any bitter young non unionizedworkers? The cold and the young workers were absent and present at thesame time. Yes, it's a weird arithmetic that can't pin down the numbers.*Thomas F. Gieryn and Anne E. Figert, "Ingredients for a Theory of Scienccin SOCiety: ORings, Ice Water, CClamps, Richard Feynmann and the Press," inS. Cozzens and T. Gieryn, eds., Theories of Science in SOCiety (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1990) . See also J. L. Adams, FIyin8 Buttresses, Entropy and ORin8s(Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1991).SHILLY·SHALLYING IN THe SEVENTIES