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

the network) and of the state of the energy-di stributingequipment ;-t elephone stat ions putting the operators in contactwith the various operat ional poles (workshops , stations ) ,and, through direct lines, with police headquarters, firestations, and the eme rgency telephone system .HIM: "Well, here at least I'm on my own turf. A panopticon,buttons, calls, alarms, control panels, a command post. It consoles mefor having given you so many rights. Now it's a real general-headquarterscommand post. It's not going to be a question of playing the smartguy."ME: "You don't realize it, but you're going to break down everyfour seconds. Don't forget that you have 660 pairs of cars to manage.And at the slightest warning I go into security mode and blockeverything. You were talking about crowds. Imagine what youl1 get ifwe add up all the relationships among all these beings."HIM: "It's not possible," Norbert exclaimed, terrified by a complicationthat delighted me as it had probably delighted the Matraengineers. "You can't manage crowds like that. You're sure that this isthe price of autonomous existence?""Of course; it suffices to make the mobile units more and moreintelligent. You'll seetheyl1 end up managing all those multitudes."[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Laffite, RATP engineer in charge of automation:"I always forget to mention it, because it strikes me as self-evident, but eachcar possesses a representation of the entire track. It has the invariants-its ownnumber first of all; it knows who it is, and this is cabled; it's been given themaximum speed limits for each section; it knows the profiles of all the stations."I forget to say it, but this is the base. This is how it knows where it is."Okay, these are the invariants; this stuff is entered into memory once andfor all."So, next it reads the information module that's on the track. There are twoARAMIS AT THE CEr STAGe