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

to be flicked impatiently away, an attractive idea that flits from seminarto colloquium to investigatory body to research report. "Aramis " is anargument, a story that grownup children tell themselves: "What if Iwere an automated car? ..." It's an anecdote that moves from handto hand and stirs up engineers; a rousing possibility. As a story, it is notyet cast in lead. It has not yet been replaced, in each of its words, eachof its lines of blueprints, by a steel bar, by an aluminum plate, by aprinted circuit. My story is told in words and drawings; it is not yet setin hard type. What the account book foresees is not yet accounted fo r,inscribed, engraved, burned in forever in the amorphous silicon. Peoplestammer out my name. Nothing happens between two elements ofAramis that the engineers aren't obliged to relay through their ownbodies. The motor breaks down, the onboard steering shakes andshatters, the automatic features are still heteromats overpopulated withpeople in blue and white smocks. Chase away the people and I returnto an inert state. Bring the people back and I am aroused again, butmy life belongs to the engineers who are pushing me, pulling me,repairing me, deciding about me, cursing me, steering me. No, Aramisis not yet among the powers that be. The prototype circulates in bitsand pieces between the hands of humans; humans do not circulatebetween my sides. I am a great human anthill. a huge body in theprocess of composition and decomposition, depending. If men stopbeing interested in me, I don't even talk any more. The thing liesdismembered, in countless pieces dispersed among laboratories andworkshops. Aramis, I, we, hesitate to exist. The thing hasn't becomeirreversible. The thing doesn't impose itself on anyone. The thing hasn'tbroken its ties to its creators.SHILLY·SHALLYING IN THE SEVENTIES