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

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"Yes, we 've made a lot of progress. The mystery is not its deathin 1987 or 1982, but why it came back to life between 1982 and 1987.Now that it's loved by so many people, \""c're g oin g to have to movefrom the little guys to the big guys. Ready to take on the stratosphere,Mister Young Engineer? You must admit you're learning more here thanin your classrooms, where you solve equations the professor alreadyknows how to do. Do they talk about love, at least, in your school?They never teach technology in engineering schools, if they don't teachyou to follow a project from the smallest cubbyholes up to the loftiestspheres. Our laboratory is Paris and its antechambers.""Then Paris is ours!" I exclaimed in a moment of excitement forwhich the reader, aware of mv youth, will surely pardon me.J , JTechnological projects become reversible or irreversible in relationto the work of contextualization ...Aramis, delicately balanced up to this point, has become so weakthat a puff of air could wipe it out: zero-degree inertia, maximum reversibility.Aramis, now linked to Big Politics, becomes "promising"-"so promising"that the company head can no longer stop it, he claims. Maximumirreversibility: no one, despite the desires of the two chief protagonists, cankill it. The type of irreversibility changes in just a few months-and willchange again, several times, proving to what extent projects are of coursereversible. This is because technological projects can be tied into differentcontexts and can thus become promising or needy, depending on circumstances.They are set into context by the spokesperson, as something is setto music or "orchestrated ." Aramis in 1981 nearly becomes a pile of papercovered over by the drab surfaces of closed files. It nearly becomes one ofthose thousands of projects that slumber in engineers' drawers and studies.The company head could make it unreal. He has his finger on the button,ready to send it back to the void. But then something happens: the workof contextualization starts up and is so successful, so sprightly, that Aramisfinds itself solidly ensconced on the Left. After getting Petit, Bardet, and Levyenthused, all of a sudden it excites the Communist president. It has becomea political slogan, a reference in so many speeches and in so manynewspaper articles that it has a life of its own; it can't be stopped. For aIN H R P I I.c.A'-'S"."E=---________
project that was an amusing dossier that needed to be closed in a hurry,it's not doing badly at all.Contextualization is fabricated and negotiated like everything else:by tying bigger and bigger pots and pans, and more and more of them,to the project's tail. When it stirs, it's going to stir up all of France. It makesenough commotion to wake up a minister. But the pots and pans still haveto be found; they have to be tied on tight, and the beast has to be madeto move. A lot of work that the notion of "context-given-in-advance" haughtilyrefuses to acknowledge. This neglect is all the more damaging in thatsuch work can be undone. When Aramis dies, in 1987, no minister willstir. All the pots and pans will have been removed. Those who werecounting on the irreversibility of the context to keep their technologies alivewake up in the cemetery.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Girard is speaking once again:"How do you explain the paradoxical fact that the CET started up againiust when everybody Finally was beginning to have doubts?""First, the backbone of the thing is the southern part of the Petite Ceinture,with its branch lines. There we developed a project that corresponded, like itor not, to a certain number of objectives. That project mode it clear, perhaps,that extensions 01 the metro were financial crimes."For example, there was a plan to extend line 4 toward the south; thatwould have completely downgraded the line. The Porte d'Orleans terminus isremarkable; it does its job in 80 seconds. We would have really messed thingsup on the operational level and spent colossal sums if they'd insisted onextending the lines. The RATP was burdened with a series of projects involvingthe extension of lines-projects that it didn't know how to get rid 01. Aramiswas on alibi. Everybody got excited about it; we spent three or four millionfrancs for a mediocre interest, but in any event no one said another thing aboutextensions. ""Could you go bock over the list of proiect supporters in /983-84? Thisis the period I'm having the most trouble grasping.""Okay, there was the Mauroy administration, which strongly supported it.It was supported by Quin It was supported by me-I was very happy aboutit, although skeptical; I would be able to nip in the bud the line-extensionprojects that I really didn't like. Then there was Orly-Rungis [predecessor of,NIlRPl1 ASE
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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
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)At Matra headqu
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M, Parlat, proi
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Stationl00o
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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 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 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
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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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