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

[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]-M. Freque, proiect head, is speaking at Matra headquarters:"The problem with Aramis is that the railway system is safe, but heavy andhard for Aramis' light cars to use. We really needed something like automobiles,but automobiles aren't reliable stock; they're nothing like railroads in thatrespect-nothing like VAL, even-and VA L still used a lot of elements from thestandard subway. Obviously aeronautics a nd space materials are reliable andlightweight, but they're extremely expensive!"So you see the problem? We hod to invent everything."Everything hod to be done, or done ove r. Since everything hod to beredone-making automobile equipment reliable, lowering the cost of the MirageIII pumps (you see how far we went?), lightening the components of thesubway-we were in a state of complete uncertainly, at the beginning, as tocosts."The components didn't exist, and that mode it very hard to price themBuilders laughed in our faces when we went to ask them for estimates on theprice of new materials, in small quantities, to be delivered, possibly, in 1992-931" [no. 6]M. Laffitte, RATP engineer in charge of automation, standing in front of theAramis prototype that was hung in the maintenance workshop after the proiectwas hafted:"Aramis was a hybrid. That's what Freque always said: 'Toke automobilequalitymaterial and make it as solid as railway and as sophisticated osaviation.'"Besides, you have to reckon with technological development that is differential,uneven."The motor worked out pretly well. The mechanical side went all right; sodid the hydraulic side. Electricity-there we know our way around. But electronics,especially microprocessors-that was another story ."It was going off in all directions. We really hod the impression that theyweren't in control of their programmers. Each one hod his own budget, wentas far as he could; but there was a whole team of young guys, very smart butnot very disciplined, most of them working as subcontractors. The sense ofteamwork was lost."The alarm bells kept going off, but-let's put it this way-they sounded offinternally. ".A R,. MI5 AT THE CE' STAC;_F______