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

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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"_______ __ ____ __________
"The second train of thought that accounts for my 'conversion,' if you will,was the 1989 World's Fair. Every exhibit presupposes a new form of transportation.Within the gamut of what was being proposed, Aramis was reallyinnovative: France could really present someth'lng that would symbolize Frenchtechnology at the end of the 1980s. That's what made me change my mind."[no. 18]The work af contextualizing makes the connection between a contextand a project completely unforeseeable.The history of technology-like history, period, "big" history, full ofsound and fury-is at the mercy of a reversal, an overturning, a bifurcation.The new company head opposed Aramis when he was with the RailDivision. He opens up the file. What influence will he decide to exercise?As a builder of major metro systems, will his cultural hostility to this toylikejerry-built gimmick come to the fore? Or will his president's fondness for amajor technological project capable of mobilizing the energies and enthusiasmof engineers win out? A moment of uncertainty. A crossroads. Kairos.The word "conversion" has to be taken seriously, especially when it isuttered by an engineer who is also a theologian. The company head meetshis road to Damascus. He was against Aramis. Now he is for it.In fact, every element of the aforementioned context decides, or not,to be a conductor of influence, a semiconductor, a multiconductor, or aninsulator. Transforming the context into a certain number of people whorepresent interests and who all want to achieve the goals of those theyrepresent thus does not suffice to enable one to decide whether or not theywill have any impact on Aramis, still less to calculate in advance what theimpact will be. In a given context, the same projects do or do not feel animpact; a single context can bring about contrary effects. Hence the idiocyof the notion of "preestablished context." The people are missing; the workof contextualization is missing. The context is not the spirit of the times whichwould penetrate all things equally. Every context is composed of individualswho do or do not decide to connect the fate of a project with the fate ofthe small or large ambitions they represent. The new people that electionsbring to power may decide to make Aramis one of the great ambitions ofthe technological Left; but they may also decide that Aramis is one of themany projects that the Right is dragging in its wake, projects that devour______________. ________________________________I NT ERP_HASE __ __4""'111
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ARAMISTHE LOVE OF ECHNOLOGY
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Copyright © 1996 by the President
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TO SIMON SCHAFFER 7/
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By publishing this hook, I would li
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exemplary meditation on the difficu
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PROLOGUE: WHO KILLED ARAMIS?The fir
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PROLOGUE•cember 1987. A promising
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[DOCUMENT: EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE
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"You see," he went on during one of
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"But during that period I found out
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-"There's one small problem," I sai
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1973: Test site at Orly; three-vehi
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1985: Scale model of two-car Aramis
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in a mass transit network, with no
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come true. Since every study has to
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load fa ctor, Professor? Your isola
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if by magic. An electronic calculat
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to be invented, if we are to track
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---) TransporterTime IS . ; To Char
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assembly line? You said "transfer"?
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primly, without acknowledging my cl
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defensive about playing "amusing me
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curves: DATAR, the RATP, Paris, bef
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fellow. It's like the Galileo affai
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Time To-1 2 3 4 5CJIII __ _ Time T1
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fic off the roads , it improve s tr
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ter-who speaks in the name of the g
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are solemnly and eternally committe
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me, Aramis isn't a PRT Iype of tran
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Aeroport de Paris said. IF you map
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IS ARAMIS FEASIBLE?"Now we can go o
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workshop, a control post, a recepti
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the optical sensor so it will maint
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evolutionary system of transportati
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"For my part, " the motor declares,
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-otherwise, it instructs the car to
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not only determined the laws accord
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Lamoureux, r
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they have to change the motor, mult
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there would be a lot of new functio
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"The idea was that it was seductive
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know who, among the engineers, exec
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of admiring the architecture, the s
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control room, by Ferbeck (who is al
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has the massive dimensions it takes
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come back to print. The whole passa
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"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
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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 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
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allies. Thus, not only is the actor
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from one extreme to another. If you
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isn't the only one who doesn't know
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"Aramis has a lot of advantages bec
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hour. The human being in these scen
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the subway, by virtue of its access
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even includes direct quotes! A prot
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Regie Autonome des TransportsParisi
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etween us had evaporated with Norbe
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ITY OF THE INDIVIDUALS AND COMPANIE
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opinion of the capitalists had "per
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An accusation that's so watered dow
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epistemological; it talks and talks
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conception, which exists in fact on
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put it. If Aramis existed, you woul
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"So we had to increase the absolute
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[SUMMARY OF A GROUP INTERVIEW]The s
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engineering, all the ingenuity, all
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"We've found the hidden staircase,"
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dominated by, people. But there is
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-Vehicle110,000f-PCC spervisio Stat
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]-M. Freque, pro
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problem. This task, for the project
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"What I think is that the Matra eng
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"As for the automation, I agree wit
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inappropriate, as if it were clear
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PIaorm 1X" StationI / Plaorm 2Subst
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"Level III: the fixed equipment, ea
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But since you're not human, I'd be
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--wheels, supply information about
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little I was becoming the Aramis mo
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the cars located in the sector, as
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So it givesa recalibration that'sre
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OrdinateViewpoint of mobile unit/I-
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Phonic wheelCoded equidistant cross
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"Here deceleration has to be factor
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[DOCUMENT]code 5800 .2ORI 10 0 0 00
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Norbert woke up terrified.The next
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This is the case for the Matra comp
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This figure, in the context of the
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short-term vision. 'As long as ther
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1. What M. Brun needs; what hechoos
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ecause if someone says, 'After fift
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Well then, that's reassuring. I sta
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thing, give or take a nuance or two
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that's too bad Obviously, to go fro
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They sound awfully sure of themselv
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"Either they didn't put enough ener
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Phase 1: Concept development5phose
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VAL. You'll see, we're going to fin
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on on ongoing basis how things are
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7. Aramis has been perfected as a m
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of a network, to the extent that th
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"Are they interested in elected off
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"But then why not say it was resear
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when we talked about it. The electe
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"No, no, not enough love! Love and
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ahout each other in strict confiden
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"Yet in spite of its fragility, its
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to be a line. What more could I ask
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things. That's not what brought my
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"Obligation to use all appropriate
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" Prometheus. ""Prometheus! The 'sm
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GLOSSARYA-320 An airplane built by
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BertinBienvenueBus DivisionCabinent
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tems to be controlled in the car (d
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E:'2the ministry's technical dossie
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Porno 2000PrometheusPRTQuinRofoleRa
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sniffer planeSOFRESSOFRETUSouth lin
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BIUND /ATOUI , 01"""of SOOoIogy, £
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