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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1III __ PROlOGUE ________________________________________ __who want to study the transformation of technological objects withoutworrying about the engineers, institutions, economies, or populationsinvolved in their development. The theory of evolution can take suchpeople for a ride! If you leave your engineering school to come studyinnovation, my friend, you'll have to drop all that third-rate biology.This may disappoint you, but-unless I'm completely incompetent insuch matters-a bus does not have sex organs. Never mind the poster:the R-312 doesn't descend from the Chausson APU 53 the way humansdescend from apes. You can climb aboard a bus, but you can't climbback to the Schneider H that was all over Paris in 1916. Frankenstein'smonster with his big dick and his lopsided face? Such things exist onlyin novels. You'd have quite a crowd of people parading around theLuxembourg Garden if you really wanted to honor all of the new bus'sprogenitors."I hadn't yet done any in-depth studies of technological projects.I'd just emerged from a telecommunications school where I'd takenonly physics and math; I'd never seen a motor, or a chip, or even theinside of a telephone. That's why I wanted to spend a year at the Ecoledes Mines, in sociology. There at least, or so I'd been told, ambitiousyoung people could learn the engineering trade and study real projectsin the field. I didn't find it at all reassuring to be abandoning the peaceami quiet of technological certainties only to apprentice myself to alaboratory Sherlock who'd just been entrusted by the RATP with theinvestigation of a recent murder: "Who killed Aramis?" I'd read TheThree Musketeers, but I didn't know Aramis and wasn't aware he wasdead. In the beginning, I really thought I'd landed in a whodunnit,especially since Norbert, the inspector to whom I'd been assigned, wasa fellow at least forty years old with a Columbo-style raincoat."Here's the beast," my professor said [see Photos 11-141. "It's anew transportation system, apparently a brilliant design. A combinationof private cars and public transportation. The ideal, you might say. Inany case, it's not like the R-312; there wasn't any parade in Aramis'honor, and there certainly weren't any Darwinian posters. Just a slightlysad farewell party on the boulevard Victor, at the site of the Center forTechnological Experimentation (CET) three weeks ago, in early Oe-
PROLOGUE•cember 1987. A promising, seductive, dazzling line of technology hasbeen buried without fanfare. The site will be an empty lot for a while,until it's developed as part of the renovation of the quai de Javel. Youshould have seen how mournful the engineers were. According to whatthey told me, the project was really admirable. They'll never haveanother chance to build, from the ground up, an entirely automatic andentirely revolutionary system of guided transportation-a system runningon rails. But Aramis fell out of favor. 'They dropped us'-that'swhat the engineers say. 'They' who? The Nature of Things? TechnologicalEvolution? The Parisian Jungle? That's what we've been asked to findout, my friend, because we don't belong to the transportation world.Some people claim that Aramis wouldn't have kept its promises. Butothers, apparently, say that it was the State that didn't keep its promises.It's up to us to sort all this out, and we can't rely on Darwin or onsexual metaphors. And it won't be easy."Personally, I didn't see the problem. I replied confidently that allwe had to do was take a close look to see whether the project wastechnologically feasible and economically viable."That's all?" asked my mentor.j"What? Oh, no, of course not; it also has to be socially acceptable."Since my professor was a sociologist, I thought I was on the righttrack. But he grinned sardonically and showed me his first interYiewnotes.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]"It doesn't make any sense. Six months ago, everybody thought it was theeighth wonder of the world. Then all of a sudden everything fell apart. Nobodysupported it any longer. It happened so fast that no one can figure it out. Thehead of the company can't figure it out either. Can you do something? Soysomething? ."It hod been going on for twenty years; the time hod come to call it quits.It'll be a fine case for you muckrakers from the Ecole des Mines. Why did theykeep that monstrosity going so long on intravenous feedings, until somebodyfinally hod the balls to yank out the tubes? .
Page 2 and 3: ARAMISTHE LOVE OF ECHNOLOGY
Page 4 and 5: Copyright © 1996 by the President
Page 6 and 7: TO SIMON SCHAFFER 7/
Page 8 and 9: By publishing this hook, I would li
Page 10 and 11: exemplary meditation on the difficu
Page 13: PROLOGUE: WHO KILLED ARAMIS?The fir
Page 17 and 18: [DOCUMENT: EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE
Page 19 and 20: "You see," he went on during one of
Page 21 and 22: "But during that period I found out
Page 23 and 24: -"There's one small problem," I sai
Page 25 and 26: 1973: Test site at Orly; three-vehi
Page 27 and 28: 1985: Scale model of two-car Aramis
Page 29 and 30: in a mass transit network, with no
Page 31 and 32: come true. Since every study has to
Page 33 and 34: load fa ctor, Professor? Your isola
Page 35 and 36: if by magic. An electronic calculat
Page 37 and 38: to be invented, if we are to track
Page 39 and 40: ---) TransporterTime IS . ; To Char
Page 41 and 42: assembly line? You said "transfer"?
Page 43 and 44: primly, without acknowledging my cl
Page 45 and 46: defensive about playing "amusing me
Page 47 and 48: curves: DATAR, the RATP, Paris, bef
Page 49 and 50: fellow. It's like the Galileo affai
Page 51 and 52: Time To-1 2 3 4 5CJIII __ _ Time T1
Page 53 and 54: fic off the roads , it improve s tr
Page 55 and 56: ter-who speaks in the name of the g
Page 57 and 58: are solemnly and eternally committe
Page 59 and 60: me, Aramis isn't a PRT Iype of tran
Page 61 and 62: Aeroport de Paris said. IF you map
Page 63 and 64: IS ARAMIS FEASIBLE?"Now we can go o
Page 65 and 66:
workshop, a control post, a recepti
Page 67 and 68:
the optical sensor so it will maint
Page 69 and 70:
evolutionary system of transportati
Page 71 and 72:
"For my part, " the motor declares,
Page 73 and 74:
-otherwise, it instructs the car to
Page 75 and 76:
not only determined the laws accord
Page 77 and 78:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Lamoureux, r
Page 79 and 80:
they have to change the motor, mult
Page 81 and 82:
there would be a lot of new functio
Page 83 and 84:
"The idea was that it was seductive
Page 85 and 86:
know who, among the engineers, exec
Page 87 and 88:
of admiring the architecture, the s
Page 89 and 90:
control room, by Ferbeck (who is al
Page 91 and 92:
has the massive dimensions it takes
Page 93 and 94:
come back to print. The whole passa
Page 95 and 96:
"Do you comprehend the crime, the u
Page 97 and 98:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)At Matra headqu
Page 99:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M, Parlat, proi
Page 102 and 103:
Stationl00o
Page 104 and 105:
destinations: that's the idea that
Page 106 and 107:
the network, all the problems of au
Page 108 and 109:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Etienne, hea
Page 110 and 111:
ody can commit himself; it's imposs
Page 112 and 113:
configuration on the board. Besides
Page 114 and 115:
to the real transportation system,
Page 116 and 117:
As a young engineer, I refused to c
Page 118 and 119:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)In M. Hector's
Page 120 and 121:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Parlat is sp
Page 122 and 123:
did his field work in the Amazon ra
Page 124 and 125:
What counts, in a technological pro
Page 126 and 127:
"That's an interesting theory all r
Page 128 and 129:
"With VAL, we moved gradually from
Page 130 and 131:
hard; you'd need to build it into t
Page 132 and 133:
also VAL; Ficheur, the contracting
Page 134 and 135:
completely ignores economic conditi
Page 136 and 137:
INTERPHASE :THRE E YEARS OF GRAC E"
Page 138 and 139:
construction of the Center for Tech
Page 140 and 141:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]At the Ministry
Page 142 and 143:
every year?* You could pay for Aram
Page 144 and 145:
A "trashable explanation" ! The exa
Page 146 and 147:
II est passe par iciII repassera pa
Page 148 and 149:
uilding reliable, predictable, conv
Page 150 and 151:
public funds vampire-fashion and th
Page 152 and 153:
"Number 7 is incompatible with numb
Page 154 and 155:
"Yes, we 've made a lot of progress
Page 156 and 157:
Orly-Val], and then Montpellier. We
Page 158 and 159:
Norbert's sociology, he respected m
Page 160 and 161:
"In fact, I should have spent a cou
Page 162 and 163:
The rationality of technologies wri
Page 164 and 165:
Why not go see Ronald Reagan, or th
Page 166 and 167:
"I called several meetings to verif
Page 168 and 169:
the World's Fair; then they said it
Page 170 and 171:
attaching to me dozens of poor devi
Page 172 and 173:
3. In 1973, in a beet field near th
Page 174 and 175:
7 The control room for VAL in Lille
Page 176 and 177:
1 I. Aramis really does exist now;
Page 178 and 179:
] 5. [n March 1987, seven months be
Page 180 and 181:
19. Since no engineer could prove m
Page 182 and 183:
we are often the first to see, in a
Page 184 and 185:
"The RATP said to itself, 'I'm behi
Page 186 and 187:
agree. "They're aiming at VA L in s
Page 188 and 189:
"He agrees with me," I remarked mod
Page 190 and 191:
viewpoints, goals, and desires, so
Page 192 and 193:
If the actors in a project define n
Page 194 and 195:
With a technological project, inter
Page 196 and 197:
gers impatient to show up at Bercy
Page 198 and 199:
allies. Thus, not only is the actor
Page 200 and 201:
from one extreme to another. If you
Page 202 and 203:
isn't the only one who doesn't know
Page 204 and 205:
"Aramis has a lot of advantages bec
Page 206 and 207:
hour. The human being in these scen
Page 208 and 209:
the subway, by virtue of its access
Page 210 and 211:
even includes direct quotes! A prot
Page 212 and 213:
Regie Autonome des TransportsParisi
Page 214 and 215:
etween us had evaporated with Norbe
Page 216 and 217:
ITY OF THE INDIVIDUALS AND COMPANIE
Page 218 and 219:
opinion of the capitalists had "per
Page 220 and 221:
An accusation that's so watered dow
Page 222 and 223:
epistemological; it talks and talks
Page 224 and 225:
conception, which exists in fact on
Page 226 and 227:
put it. If Aramis existed, you woul
Page 228 and 229:
"So we had to increase the absolute
Page 230 and 231:
[SUMMARY OF A GROUP INTERVIEW]The s
Page 232 and 233:
engineering, all the ingenuity, all
Page 234 and 235:
"We've found the hidden staircase,"
Page 236 and 237:
dominated by, people. But there is
Page 238 and 239:
-Vehicle110,000f-PCC spervisio Stat
Page 240 and 241:
[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]-M. Freque, pro
Page 242 and 243:
problem. This task, for the project
Page 244 and 245:
"What I think is that the Matra eng
Page 246 and 247:
"As for the automation, I agree wit
Page 248 and 249:
inappropriate, as if it were clear
Page 250 and 251:
PIaorm 1X" StationI / Plaorm 2Subst
Page 252 and 253:
"Level III: the fixed equipment, ea
Page 254 and 255:
But since you're not human, I'd be
Page 256 and 257:
--wheels, supply information about
Page 258 and 259:
little I was becoming the Aramis mo
Page 260 and 261:
the cars located in the sector, as
Page 262 and 263:
So it givesa recalibration that'sre
Page 264 and 265:
OrdinateViewpoint of mobile unit/I-
Page 266 and 267:
Phonic wheelCoded equidistant cross
Page 268 and 269:
"Here deceleration has to be factor
Page 270 and 271:
[DOCUMENT]code 5800 .2ORI 10 0 0 00
Page 272 and 273:
Norbert woke up terrified.The next
Page 274 and 275:
This is the case for the Matra comp
Page 276 and 277:
This figure, in the context of the
Page 278 and 279:
short-term vision. 'As long as ther
Page 280 and 281:
1. What M. Brun needs; what hechoos
Page 282 and 283:
ecause if someone says, 'After fift
Page 284 and 285:
Well then, that's reassuring. I sta
Page 286 and 287:
thing, give or take a nuance or two
Page 288 and 289:
that's too bad Obviously, to go fro
Page 290 and 291:
They sound awfully sure of themselv
Page 292 and 293:
"Either they didn't put enough ener
Page 294 and 295:
Phase 1: Concept development5phose
Page 296 and 297:
VAL. You'll see, we're going to fin
Page 298 and 299:
on on ongoing basis how things are
Page 300 and 301:
7. Aramis has been perfected as a m
Page 302 and 303:
of a network, to the extent that th
Page 304 and 305:
"Are they interested in elected off
Page 306 and 307:
"But then why not say it was resear
Page 308 and 309:
when we talked about it. The electe
Page 310 and 311:
"No, no, not enough love! Love and
Page 312 and 313:
ahout each other in strict confiden
Page 314 and 315:
"Yet in spite of its fragility, its
Page 316 and 317:
to be a line. What more could I ask
Page 318 and 319:
things. That's not what brought my
Page 320 and 321:
"Obligation to use all appropriate
Page 322 and 323:
" Prometheus. ""Prometheus! The 'sm
Page 324 and 325:
GLOSSARYA-320 An airplane built by
Page 326 and 327:
BertinBienvenueBus DivisionCabinent
Page 328 and 329:
tems to be controlled in the car (d
Page 330 and 331:
E:'2the ministry's technical dossie
Page 332 and 333:
Porno 2000PrometheusPRTQuinRofoleRa
Page 334 and 335:
sniffer planeSOFRESSOFRETUSouth lin
Page 336:
BIUND /ATOUI , 01"""of SOOoIogy, £
show all

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

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?