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

If the actors in a project define not only the other actors' essencesand desires but also the rules for interpretation that make these definitionsworkable, all their viewpoints have to be deployed in a supple frame ofreference-a reference mollusk, as Einstein called it in his essay on relativity.Since they themselves establish their theories, their metatheories, andeven their metametatheories, the actors have to be left to their own devices.It's a laissez-faire sociology.Not only does Cohen, the former head of the Aramis project, saythat team culture and the preferences of project heads influence technologicalchoices; not only does he reconstruct possible stories (the story of a VALthat he would have directed in Freque's place, the story of an Aramis thathe would have pulled off); not only does he blend cultural and psychosociologicaldeterminism (creativity on one side, rigor on the other) withtechnological choices (probabilistic security on one side, intrinsic securityon the other); but in addition, during the interview he changes his rule forinterpretation, moving from people to organizational and economic necessities("in any event, Matra could not have done both at the same time").And all this in a interview fragment that lasts two minutes and twenty-fiveseconds! What's more, the observer must now compare these variationswith the other interviews-for example, the one with Cohen's old classmateFreque. "We really wanted to make an Aramis that would be different fromVAL," said Freque. Cohen's answer: "Even if they had wanted to, theycouldn't have"-owing to organizational necessity (they're too small),financial necessity (it costs too much), psycho-techno-cultural necessity(Freque, influenced by VAL, will never do anything but mini-VAls).Is it impossible, then, to tell the story of Aramis if all the rules diverge,if the laws of sociology vary with the point of view and from minute tominute for a given point of view? No, because the actors also providethemselves with the means to pass from one point of view to another, andthey unify, from their own point of view, and each for himself, the multiplicityof points of view thus deployed. Each constructs his own instrument in orderto elaborate a synoptic view. All the actors thus repair, for themselves, thedisorder they create by multiplying perspectives.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Gontran, a technical adviser in Fiterman 's cabinet. is speaking in hisoffice at INRETS, with the same affability, the same sensitivity to subtle variationsTHE 1984 DECISION