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

short-term vision. 'As long as there are no plans for the line, I'm not going toinvest in Aramis'-that's what they were telling themselves." [no. 5]He continues to think that it's feasible, even if he's less thanenthusiastic, so maybe I was right. But even if Aramis has been perfectedtechnologically, it's too expensive, and in any event the manufacturerin charge of producing it didn't give a damn. A peculiar Concorde.What does it mean exactly, something that's doable and that isn't done,that nobody wants to do, that nobody can do, that nobody knows howto do, that nobody can afford?[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Alexandre, Matra 's head of the CfT, speaking at Matra headquarters:"From July to November, we'd mode so much progress, we would havegotten there; I don't know how long it would have token, or what we wouldhave needed. The software was extremely complex, but at the hardware levelwe didn't have many reliability problems. We would have carried out thecontract in the long run.""So, in your heart of hearts . . .?""We would have gotten there, but it would have cost more than two m·dlionfrancs.""So it's a little like the Concorde, hyper-state-of-the-art, feasible but notcost-effective?""Yes and no. We could have pulled it off if we'd been more determined .We should have looked for outlets that were less solvent but more politicalWe should have started in Montpellier, for example; we should have experimentedcommercially and moved later on to using multicar trains and link-ups.We should have token a more gradual approach."But the CET goals were too rigid."The mechanism for maintenance support was a luxury. * Of course thesoftware could do the diagnosis, but it's another matter to go from there to*Autodiagnosis would have led to a reduction of the enormous maintenancetasks involved in Aramis, once the system was built.