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

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"But you pushed a little, didn 't you?""No, I didn't need to push. I found out one day that Aramis was beingjettisoned. Matra had decided, or the RATP technicians . . I'd be interestedto know whose decision it was, actually. My feeling is that Matra made thefatal move. In any event, the top priority now is adding a line that will parallelline A of the RER. Before, we could afford to experiment with Aramis; now wecan't even manage a night on the town, as it were."[Settling back more comfortably in his armchair.] "It's extraordinary thatthey've asked you to do this study! You know what it reminds me of? Oedipus'asking the soothsayer why the plague has come to Thebes! . . . You have theanswer in the question itself They wear blinders. Oh, there's not an ounce ofill will among the lot of them, but I've never seen such unpoliticol people. 'Howcould it happen?' they must be wondering. 'How could we make somethingthat works, and then it all goes belly-up?' It's touching, really-shows anextraordinary lack of awareness. Their own case intrigues them, because theylike sociology . . . Aramis is such an intricate mess, incredibly intricate." [no.19]"You see, my friend, hovv precise and sophisticated our informantsare," Norbert commented as he reorganized his notecards. "They talkabout Oedipus and about proximate causes . . . They know everything.They're doing our sociology for us, and doing it better than we can;it's not worth the trouble to do more. You see? Our job is a cinch. Wejust follow the players. They all agree, in the end, about the death ofAramis. They blame each other, of course, but they speak with onevoice: the proximate cause of death is of no interest-it's just a finalblow, a last straw, a ripe fruit, a mere consequence. As M. Girard saidso magnificently, 'It was built right into the nature of things.' There'sno point in deciding who finally killed Aramis. It was a collectiveassassination. An abandonment, rather. It's useless to get bogged downconcentrating on the final phase. What we have to do is see who builtthose 'things' in, and into what 'natures.' We 're going to have to go backto the beginning of the project, to the remote causes. And remember,this business went on for seventeen years."
-"There's one small problem," I said timidly. "I don't know a thingabout transportation.""Neither do I," replied mv boss serenelv. "That's whv 1 was/ / /chosen. In a year, you can learn about any subject in the world. There'swork ahead, but it will be good for your education. You're going tolose your innocence about the sexuality of technology, Mister YoungEngineer. And I'm going to take advantage of the opportunity by writinga little commentary, a little sociology manual to make your work easier.You're to read it in addition to the books on this list; they're all in theschool library."He put on his old raincoat and disappeared in the drizzle, headingdown the boulevard Saint-Michel.Left to my own devices, 1 looked at the list. It included eighty-sixtitles, two-thirds of them in English. Tell an engineer to read books? Itwas quite a shock. As for the commentary, I was certainly going toneed it, because there was a further complication: the laboratory whereI was doing my internship used the word "sociology" in a way thatabsolutely no one else did.
Page 2 and 3: ARAMISTHE LOVE OF ECHNOLOGY
Page 4 and 5: Copyright © 1996 by the President
Page 6 and 7: TO SIMON SCHAFFER 7/
Page 8 and 9: By publishing this hook, I would li
Page 10 and 11: exemplary meditation on the difficu
Page 13 and 14: PROLOGUE: WHO KILLED ARAMIS?The fir
Page 15 and 16: PROLOGUE•cember 1987. A promising
Page 17 and 18: [DOCUMENT: EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE
Page 19 and 20: "You see," he went on during one of
Page 21: "But during that period I found out
Page 25 and 26: 1973: Test site at Orly; three-vehi
Page 27 and 28: 1985: Scale model of two-car Aramis
Page 29 and 30: in a mass transit network, with no
Page 31 and 32: come true. Since every study has to
Page 33 and 34: load fa ctor, Professor? Your isola
Page 35 and 36: if by magic. An electronic calculat
Page 37 and 38: to be invented, if we are to track
Page 39 and 40: ---) TransporterTime IS . ; To Char
Page 41 and 42: assembly line? You said "transfer"?
Page 43 and 44: primly, without acknowledging my cl
Page 45 and 46: defensive about playing "amusing me
Page 47 and 48: curves: DATAR, the RATP, Paris, bef
Page 49 and 50: fellow. It's like the Galileo affai
Page 51 and 52: Time To-1 2 3 4 5CJIII __ _ Time T1
Page 53 and 54: fic off the roads , it improve s tr
Page 55 and 56: ter-who speaks in the name of the g
Page 57 and 58: are solemnly and eternally committe
Page 59 and 60: me, Aramis isn't a PRT Iype of tran
Page 61 and 62: Aeroport de Paris said. IF you map
Page 63 and 64: IS ARAMIS FEASIBLE?"Now we can go o
Page 65 and 66: workshop, a control post, a recepti
Page 67 and 68: the optical sensor so it will maint
Page 69 and 70: evolutionary system of transportati
Page 71 and 72: "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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the network, all the problems of au
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Etienne, hea
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ody can commit himself; it's imposs
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configuration on the board. Besides
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to the real transportation system,
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As a young engineer, I refused to c
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)In M. Hector's
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Parlat is sp
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did his field work in the Amazon ra
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What counts, in a technological pro
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"That's an interesting theory all r
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"With VAL, we moved gradually from
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hard; you'd need to build it into t
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also VAL; Ficheur, the contracting
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completely ignores economic conditi
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INTERPHASE :THRE E YEARS OF GRAC E"
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construction of the Center for Tech
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]At the Ministry
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every year?* You could pay for Aram
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A "trashable explanation" ! The exa
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II est passe par iciII repassera pa
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uilding reliable, predictable, conv
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public funds vampire-fashion and th
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"Number 7 is incompatible with numb
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"Yes, we 've made a lot of progress
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Orly-Val], and then Montpellier. We
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Norbert's sociology, he respected m
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"In fact, I should have spent a cou
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The rationality of technologies wri
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Why not go see Ronald Reagan, or th
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"I called several meetings to verif
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the World's Fair; then they said it
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attaching to me dozens of poor devi
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3. In 1973, in a beet field near th
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7 The control room for VAL in Lille
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1 I. Aramis really does exist now;
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] 5. [n March 1987, seven months be
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19. Since no engineer could prove m
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we are often the first to see, in a
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"The RATP said to itself, 'I'm behi
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agree. "They're aiming at VA L in s
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"He agrees with me," I remarked mod
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viewpoints, goals, and desires, so
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If the actors in a project define n
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With a technological project, inter
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gers impatient to show up at Bercy
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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
Page 330 and 331:
E:'2the ministry's technical dossie
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Porno 2000PrometheusPRTQuinRofoleRa
Page 334 and 335:
sniffer planeSOFRESSOFRETUSouth lin
Page 336:
BIUND /ATOUI , 01"""of SOOoIogy, £
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