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

uilding reliable, predictable, conventional transit systems. [po 4J ."So you see? In 1980 all it took was to clo nothing at all to killAramis, since everywhere in the world-Germany, Japan , the UnitedStates-PRT s were in a state of 'cardiac arrest,' as they say. Moreover(and this confirms our hypothesis about the innocence of the earlierphase), after Orly all PRT projects had the same defects: hesitation,absence of normalization, cost overruns, delays, total chaos. So there'snothing unusual in this period. The project is normal.""Do they mention Aramis in that report?"Yes, of course. On page 65 they say-speaking of the year1986 -that Aramis is 'the only credible PRT system under developmentat this time.' They sav that it's crucial for the future of PRTs because, Jof the rotary motor, the platoon configuration, and the automatedself-diagnostic mechanisms, but that it costs a small fortune."[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Girard, speaking in a temporary office:"When I was appointed [05 head of the RATP] in 1982-1'11 be honest withyou-when I opened the file, I wanted to close it right then. 'Enough foolingaround with thai stuff; we can place our bets more effedively than that. '"Lagardere probably had the same thought. 'Every day brings its owntroubles. VAL is bad enough-why run after mirages?' The head of the RATP,the head of Matra, in their heart of hearts, were determined to kill Aramis."I myself become a convert, for two reasons. First, I went bock upstream,as it were, bock to the somewhat utopian thinking of the 19605. It's still acurrent issue, too: we need something like cars that join together, trains thatsplit apart. A bit maliciously, I even thought it would work for the existingnetwork, especially the RER. Aside from a few very crowded transfer stations,the RER amounts to a lot of long, empty cars that we drag around the countryside.Couplings and uncouplings are terrible problems. Cars that come togethersmoothly might well come in handy. I said to myself, 'Hey, in five or ten years,we'll need a system like that for the branch lines.'•__ .IN TE R P HAS Ec"_______ __ ____ __________