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

feasible but claims the operating agency was asking the impossible. I'mreally starting to wonder whether Norbert wasn't right. It's not so easyto decide whether Aramis is technologically feasible or not.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]Messrs. Gueguen and Pariat, of the RAT?, who participated directly in theproject and in the drafting of the end-of-contract contradictory report:M. Parlat:"The technicians weren't able to stand up to the politicians. The current lineis that 'technologically it's a success'-but that's not the way we see it.""So the eET wasn't usefulg""Oh yes, the CET had to be done, it was indispensable; with studies, onpaper, you never go far enough. You say, 'We'll get there,' you think problemsalways get solved, you think engineers can always muddle through, but withthe CET we really had our backs to the woll.""You know that you're being accused of rigidity, of being unwilling tosimplify Aramis, of inSisting on respecting the contract too rigorously and ofhaving scuttled the project for that reasong"M. Gueguen:"But that's not being rigid-we didn't want a mini-VAL! If you give upnonmaterial couplings, it's not Aramis any longer. There weren't any develop'ment problems with the mini-VAL; it exists. Among ourselves we were calling itan ARAMIS-VS, for 'very simplified!'""Yes, but if it wasn't technologically feasible, of course you had to simplify. ""It's more complicated than that. The people in charge should have said'stop' if it was infeaSible; we knew there were problems, but they shouldn'thave come around telling us it was technologically perfect, when Matra hadn'tperfected it."In Entre les lignes I read something interesting [see the second documentin the Prologue]: 'It's a technological success, but there's no application for itand it's not our fault. If we kept going we'd be ready.' How do you expect usto believe that?"Obviously, we can be accused of not haVing tried to call attention to theproblem; but we did try, and our concerns weren't taken into account ."You have to understand why they all say, 'It's a technological success,'