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

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Orly-Val], and then Montpellier. We told ourselves: 'All these proiects are notstupid. They're worth it. In any case, the technological development is interesting,and there's a possibility of industrial development' ."The end didn't surprise me; all it took was a finance minister ... It was acolossus with feet of cloy. Meanwhile, all the supports for the colossus hoddisappeared. I should point out that there weren't any more suburban mayorsclamoring for lines. The Paris mayor's office, for its part, remained interested.Chirac wrote to the RATP asking that something be done on the Petite CeintureSince the success of the lille prolect in 1977-78, Matro believed in nothingbut VAL, and it was all over for everything else. Aramis was just 'to see whatwould happen.'"It hardly matters who provided the last strow that did the system in; that'sa proximate couse. In any case, the point is that a lost strow was all it took. Itdoesn't matter who killed the project. I don't actually know the proximatecause."But the remote co use-do you know that? ""Yes, of course. You know, when I understood that Aramis had beenterminated , I wasn't surprised; for me, it was built into the nature of things. "[no18]"Why do we do the sociology and history of technology," askedmy mentor Norbert, with tears in his eyes, "when the people weinterview are such good sociologists, such good historians? There'snothing to add. It's all there. 'Built into the nature ?f thinas: there youhave ittechnology! Insert, engrave , inscribe things within, inside, rightin the middle, of nature and they f10w on their ovvn, they f10w fromthe source, they become automatic. Give me the remote causes-let'sgo back to the mainsprings of the tragedygive me Matra, the Communists,the Right, the Left, the mayor of Paris, the traitorous technicians;let's put them on stage in 1984 . . . and in 1987, here comesthe death blow. An implacable clockwork is operating before our veryeyes. And it's he, the company head, who inscribes, who engraves, thesethings in nature. He himself machine-tools the jatum that is going tobring the plot to its conclusion with no surprises; he's the deus exINTERPHASE
machina, the god of machines. Enshrine the interviews and shut upthat'sthe only role for a good sociologist."Without letting myself get as worked up as he was, I went onenumerating Aramises, as he'd taught me:16. Aramis on the Petite Ceinture with a few branch lines it'sinteresting, in spite of everything;17. Aramis makes it possible to nip in the bud the projects formetro-line extensions that the mavors wanted, and so it interests theRATP even if it doesn't get built;18. Aramis with nonmaterial couplings no longer interests Matra,after VAL's success; it no longer interests the mayors either, but it stillinterests the technicians a little, and it interests Montpellier a lot, andalso the Mauroy administration;19. Something, but not necessarily Aramis on the Petite Ceinture,still interests the mayor of Paris;20. Aramis is not loved by the finance minister."There's nothing more to be said," Norbert announced, ratherirritated by my academic approach to the issue. "They're doing thesociology for us, that's all.""If they're such good sociologists," I replied, bewildered, "if theydo such good sociotechnological analyses, why not say so in 1984? Whynot write it in the reports? Well, I want to point out that we find notrace of these refinements in the documents we've read. Not a wordof doubt in the minutes of the development committee. * We find onlyconstant praise of Aramis, the eighth wonder of the world. Neithervisible compromise nor negotiation.""Say, that's true! We 11 make something of you yet, if the goblinsdon't get you . . ." It was the first nice thing he'd said to me since Istarted my apprenticeship.That was the happiest point in the investigation. I now respected*To follow up on major projects, the ministries ean delegate the task of scientificoversight to a development committee that hrings together all parties involved andthat is charged with informing the public authorities about the evolution of therelationships between the contracting authority and the contractor. In practice, itfunctions too often like a rubber stamp.INrERPHASE
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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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destinations: that's the idea that
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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 154 and 155: "Yes, we 've made a lot of progress
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
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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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