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

problem. This task, for the project head, is what taking VAL is, for theaverage user. Entire lines of the flow chart consist of such intermediariespiledup, folded in, folded over, implicating each other, black boxesstacked up one upon another. The building lines (no. 150,000) or theelectricity network (130 ,OOOL or even the track (140 ,OOO) offer no surprises.No imps are about to pop out of these black boxes. Or at least itis easy to make them go back in. Even if calamities threaten to emerge,Pandora's box can be closed up again quickly: the concrete arrives ontime, the track is ready at the right time, and the electricity lights up at theexpected frequency-there is nothing mysterious in this fidelity to allies, forthey have been disciplined, shaped, over a century or two; they havebecome reliable technologies, disciplined resources.But unfortunately for the project head, Aramis requires allies that arenot so disciplined-chips that skitter about in corners, programmers whoare as immature as their technologies. We move, then, from the lovely flowchart to the schema of translation, from black boxes to gray boxes, fromdivision of labor to undivided chaos. The main program is interrupted. Andas the worst can always be counted on, the whole stack of subprogramscan revolt one after the other. Instead of finally bringing Aramis intoexistence, on the boulevard Victor, the project's participants found themselvesin the research situation they thought they had left behind.Pandora's box cracks open and calamities emerge one after another.Is program B a means? or C? or D? Nobody knows. Does program B-orC or D-count at all, or has it become a definitive obstacle? Nobodyknows. Each one has become a mediator that now has to be reckonedwith, for it transforms the goals and redefines the hierarchy between mainand subordinate, goal and means. What was complicated has becomecomplex. Between a and 1, the observer must become as patient as Cantorand count numbers to infinity. The part has become superior to the whole.Every engineer grappling with new projects has experienced this mathematico-ontologicaldrama, and many, like Cantor, have been scarredby it.Stabi lized stateComplicatedIntermediariesInstabilityComplexMediatorsARAMIS AT THe CrT STAGE