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

gers impatient to show up at Bercy are forming on the boulevard Victor;"Aramis, " they whisper, "is almost ready." So it's difficult to go back onone's word and announce, "Move along! There's nothing to see hereexcept research projects." For the announcers' responsibility is on the line;they can no longer retreat. With the "pressure" of the technologists whoadd their power to the missile that's rolling down the hill, have we returnedto the physical model? No, because their pressure originates in Aramis'"seductiveness." Technologists are enamored of the "merger technology"and even more so of the "nonmaterial couplings" that attach them to theirproject. So here's a real monster. A force that is both physical and amorous-atrue Minotaur. But the interviewee doesn't stop there. He moveson to anthropology. How could someone who has already "snuffed out"so many innovative projects have the nerve to assassinate the latest one,tender and charming as it is? Wouldn't he be immobilized by shame? Allthe more so because Aramis can be "seen" by the public; it can beinaugurated. What model is implied here? A good model of political vanity:we love those who solemnly inaugurate what they have done with ourmoney, in our name, and for our benefit. But this model of visibility is inturn interpreted thanks to the application of a commercial interpretation tothe political world: "An innovation that the public can't see won't sell."Let's calculate the sum of forces-using this expression to designateboth the work all the actors do to sum up and the diversity of the ontologicalmodels they use. Let's add the thrusts of human labor, the fall of ballisticmissiles, the responsibility of promises, amorous seduction, the shame ofmore killing, vanity, business---everything that makes Aramis impossible tosuspend. Yes, it's definitely a strange monster, a strange physics. It's theMinotaur, plus the labyrinth, plus Ariadne and her thread, plus Daedalus,who is condemned to die in it and who dreams of escaping. They're reallyfun, those people who write books in which they think they're castigatingtechnology with adjectives like smooth, cold, profitable, efficient, inhuman,irreversible, autonomous! These insults are qualities with which the engineerswould be delighted indeed to endow their hybrid beings. They rarelysucceed in doing so.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Gontran again, after a long reflective pause:"Matra's strategy? I think it was pretty simple.Till 1984 DECISION