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

electronically but not physically. That's the Aramis revolution: a maior weightreduction. We've gone from railroads to automobiles, thanks to nonmaterialcoupling." [no. 15]M. Chalvan, at Aisthom."You never talk about mechanical uncoupling as a solution?""No, it doesn't exist. It's impossible. In any case, not if speed is a factorIt's not even an option. It just doesn't come up." [no. 46]How to frame a technological investigation? By sticking to the frameworkand the limits indicated by the interviewees themselves.They all say the same thing: "At the time, the world was dreamingof PRTs; mechanical uncoupling was impossible." For our informants, PRTsare no longer the invention of an isolated engineer, traceable throughprojects, contracts, and memoranda; rather, they're a collective dream. Thetechnological impossibility of uncoupling is not a decision or the opinionof a handful of researchers. It's self-evident, obvious to everybody. Goeswithout saying. Doesn't generate the slightest controversy. It would take aMartian landing in the world of guided transportation to open up thatquestion. Our interviewees no longer even manage to recall who mighthave come up with the dream of PRT. They can't tell you what institutionswere behind its development. They can't come up with the names of thedozen or so engineers, journalists, middlemen, and public officials thatwould allow the investigator to replace the term "everybody" with a lobby,a school, a network. In 1988 the Sixties are remote. The origin of theproject (1968, 1969) quickly gets lost in the mists of time, and like everynarrative of origins it takes on the mythical characteristics of all Mists ofTime: "Once upon a time; Everybody; No one can resist; Impossible." Ofcourse, a historian of technology ought to work back toward that originand replace it with groups, interests, intentions, events, opinions. She wouldgo to America, to Germany, to Japan. She would visit the SNCF; she wouldwork out the entire history of couplings and uncouplings. She would rummagethrough the archives. She would sketch the enormous fresco ofguided transportation. She would reposition Aramis "in its historical framework";she would determine its place in the entire history of guided-transportationsystems. She would go further and further back in time. But thenwe would lose sight of Aramis, that particular event, that fiction seeking toEXCITING INNOVA TION