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

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Well then, that's reassuring. I started worrying too soon. The engineersclosest to the project have doubts about its technological feasibility, forpsychological reasons perhaps, but the experts who are farthest removedremain quite satisfied.[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Desciees, author of the foregoing letter:"My only worry was that the political decision [to quit] should not damagewhat had been gained scientifically, and that they should say, 'It's not becauseit didn't work that we're stopping.' That was my concern ."I didn't want Matra to be held responsible; I didn't want it to be said thatthey had to stop because Matra hadn't met its obligations, you understand2"I didn't want to cast any further discredit on the technology, anything thatcould have given the Budget Office more grist for its mill [to criticize otherinnovations in public transportation].""So it's out of solidarity for those who were defending technological innovations?It's tied to the fact that Fiterman leaned rather heavily on the BudgetOffice?""Things like that are never forgotten; hence the orderly retreat." [no 11]But this changes everything once more! The Budget Office again!How am I expected to decide whether Aramis is technologically feasibleor not when they're arranging, consciously and deliberately, to protectMatra in order to preserve the future of huge, costly, technologicalprojects? The question of technological feasibility is muddled for muddling'ssake. What? Could there be a conspiracy to protect the engineers?Are they behaving like schoolboys who've done something foolishamI don't want the Budget Office to catch them?Ouch! I have a feeling I'm getting confused again-starting to dobad sociology, to use a borrowed phrase. I'm going back to blaming anddenouncing. It's also because Norbert is letting me work all by myself.Instead of running after monsters to kiss, he ought to be doing thetechnology audit himself . . .
I'll have to see what the press file says. With all those journalistswho swarm around juicy subjects, there must be some interestingrevelations about Aramis' feasibility.[DOCUMENT: ARTICLE BY ALAIN FAUJAS, LE MONDE, OCTOBER 26, 1987)By November, the definitive results will be in, but theywill not keep the project from being abandoned. Respondingto pressure from Matra, M. Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris,had proposed to install it between the Gare de Lyon and theGare d' Austerlitz . But on this minor branch line, Aramiswould not have shown it s full capabil i ties . The regional officialsseem to pre fer the classic metro inside Parisproper . As for the RATP, it considers Aramis a technologicalsuccess and a commercial failure . In its view, Aramis hastoo little carrying capacity, is too sophisticated, andcosts too much for its intended use-that is, transporting amaximum number of passengers . At a time when the RATP istightening its belt, it prefers to reserve its investmentsfor things like progressive automation of its existinglines. Matra has chosen not to comment on the probable abandonmentof the program. The CEO of Matra Transport, a subsidiaryof Matra, says only, with a touch of bitterness, "Wecouldn't do it all by ourselves."Yet Aramis will not have been tested in vain. It has led tobetter mastery of automation and improvement of the whollyelectronic guidance system that will go into operation onthe newest line of the Lyon metro and that will pilot the second-generationVAL, Matra' s other metro, the one that hasbeen a success in Lille, Chicago, Jacksonville, and Toulouseand that will win out soon perhaps in Strasbourg andBordeaux .Well, it's a good thing there are journalists! The press dossier isunanimous. I've found morc than a hundred articles saying the sameARAMIS IS READY ro GO
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ARAMISTHE LOVE OF ECHNOLOGY
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Copyright © 1996 by the President
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TO SIMON SCHAFFER 7/
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By publishing this hook, I would li
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exemplary meditation on the difficu
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PROLOGUE: WHO KILLED ARAMIS?The fir
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PROLOGUE•cember 1987. A promising
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[DOCUMENT: EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE
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"You see," he went on during one of
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"But during that period I found out
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-"There's one small problem," I sai
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1973: Test site at Orly; three-vehi
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1985: Scale model of two-car Aramis
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in a mass transit network, with no
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come true. Since every study has to
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load fa ctor, Professor? Your isola
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if by magic. An electronic calculat
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to be invented, if we are to track
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---) TransporterTime IS . ; To Char
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assembly line? You said "transfer"?
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primly, without acknowledging my cl
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defensive about playing "amusing me
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curves: DATAR, the RATP, Paris, bef
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fellow. It's like the Galileo affai
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Time To-1 2 3 4 5CJIII __ _ Time T1
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fic off the roads , it improve s tr
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ter-who speaks in the name of the g
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are solemnly and eternally committe
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me, Aramis isn't a PRT Iype of tran
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Aeroport de Paris said. IF you map
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IS ARAMIS FEASIBLE?"Now we can go o
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workshop, a control post, a recepti
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the optical sensor so it will maint
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evolutionary system of transportati
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"For my part, " the motor declares,
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-otherwise, it instructs the car to
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not only determined the laws accord
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Lamoureux, r
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they have to change the motor, mult
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there would be a lot of new functio
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"The idea was that it was seductive
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know who, among the engineers, exec
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of admiring the architecture, the s
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control room, by Ferbeck (who is al
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has the massive dimensions it takes
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come back to print. The whole passa
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"Do you comprehend the crime, the u
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)At Matra headqu
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M, Parlat, proi
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Stationl00o
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destinations: that's the idea that
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the network, all the problems of au
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Etienne, hea
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ody can commit himself; it's imposs
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configuration on the board. Besides
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to the real transportation system,
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As a young engineer, I refused to c
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)In M. Hector's
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Parlat is sp
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did his field work in the Amazon ra
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What counts, in a technological pro
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"That's an interesting theory all r
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"With VAL, we moved gradually from
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hard; you'd need to build it into t
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also VAL; Ficheur, the contracting
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completely ignores economic conditi
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INTERPHASE :THRE E YEARS OF GRAC E"
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construction of the Center for Tech
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]At the Ministry
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every year?* You could pay for Aram
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A "trashable explanation" ! The exa
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II est passe par iciII repassera pa
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uilding reliable, predictable, conv
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public funds vampire-fashion and th
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"Number 7 is incompatible with numb
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"Yes, we 've made a lot of progress
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Orly-Val], and then Montpellier. We
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Norbert's sociology, he respected m
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"In fact, I should have spent a cou
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The rationality of technologies wri
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Why not go see Ronald Reagan, or th
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"I called several meetings to verif
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the World's Fair; then they said it
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attaching to me dozens of poor devi
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3. In 1973, in a beet field near th
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7 The control room for VAL in Lille
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1 I. Aramis really does exist now;
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] 5. [n March 1987, seven months be
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19. Since no engineer could prove m
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we are often the first to see, in a
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"The RATP said to itself, 'I'm behi
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agree. "They're aiming at VA L in s
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"He agrees with me," I remarked mod
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viewpoints, goals, and desires, so
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If the actors in a project define n
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With a technological project, inter
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gers impatient to show up at Bercy
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allies. Thus, not only is the actor
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from one extreme to another. If you
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isn't the only one who doesn't know
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"Aramis has a lot of advantages bec
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hour. The human being in these scen
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the subway, by virtue of its access
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even includes direct quotes! A prot
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Regie Autonome des TransportsParisi
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etween us had evaporated with Norbe
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ITY OF THE INDIVIDUALS AND COMPANIE
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opinion of the capitalists had "per
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An accusation that's so watered dow
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epistemological; it talks and talks
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conception, which exists in fact on
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put it. If Aramis existed, you woul
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"So we had to increase the absolute
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[SUMMARY OF A GROUP INTERVIEW]The s
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engineering, all the ingenuity, all
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Page 240 and 241: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]-M. Freque, pro
Page 242 and 243: problem. This task, for the project
Page 244 and 245: "What I think is that the Matra eng
Page 246 and 247: "As for the automation, I agree wit
Page 248 and 249: inappropriate, as if it were clear
Page 250 and 251: PIaorm 1X" StationI / Plaorm 2Subst
Page 252 and 253: "Level III: the fixed equipment, ea
Page 254 and 255: But since you're not human, I'd be
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Page 260 and 261: the cars located in the sector, as
Page 262 and 263: So it givesa recalibration that'sre
Page 264 and 265: OrdinateViewpoint of mobile unit/I-
Page 266 and 267: Phonic wheelCoded equidistant cross
Page 268 and 269: "Here deceleration has to be factor
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Page 272 and 273: Norbert woke up terrified.The next
Page 274 and 275: This is the case for the Matra comp
Page 276 and 277: This figure, in the context of the
Page 278 and 279: short-term vision. 'As long as ther
Page 280 and 281: 1. What M. Brun needs; what hechoos
Page 282 and 283: ecause if someone says, 'After fift
Page 286 and 287: thing, give or take a nuance or two
Page 288 and 289: that's too bad Obviously, to go fro
Page 290 and 291: They sound awfully sure of themselv
Page 292 and 293: "Either they didn't put enough ener
Page 294 and 295: Phase 1: Concept development5phose
Page 296 and 297: VAL. You'll see, we're going to fin
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Page 300 and 301: 7. Aramis has been perfected as a m
Page 302 and 303: of a network, to the extent that th
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Page 306 and 307: "But then why not say it was resear
Page 308 and 309: when we talked about it. The electe
Page 310 and 311: "No, no, not enough love! Love and
Page 312 and 313: ahout each other in strict confiden
Page 314 and 315: "Yet in spite of its fragility, its
Page 316 and 317: to be a line. What more could I ask
Page 318 and 319: things. That's not what brought my
Page 320 and 321: "Obligation to use all appropriate
Page 322 and 323: " Prometheus. ""Prometheus! The 'sm
Page 324 and 325: GLOSSARYA-320 An airplane built by
Page 326 and 327: BertinBienvenueBus DivisionCabinent
Page 328 and 329: tems to be controlled in the car (d
Page 330 and 331: E:'2the ministry's technical dossie
Page 332 and 333: Porno 2000PrometheusPRTQuinRofoleRa
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sniffer planeSOFRESSOFRETUSouth lin
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BIUND /ATOUI , 01"""of SOOoIogy, £
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