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

the ones who hold the purse strings. Yes, Aramis is too beautiful not tocome into being. If it didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it.""Well, they did invent it. Look at this document."[DOCUMENT]On April 13 , 1972, Michel Frybourg, director of the Institutefor Transportation Research (INRETS) , and Jean-Luc Lagardere,president of the Matra Motor Corporation, signedan agreement to construct an Aramis prototype in Orly at acost of around 5 million [1973] francs .The actors come in varying sizes; this is the whole problem withinnovation.Before a revolutionary transportation system can be inscribed intothe nature of things, the transports of enthusiasm shared by all theserevolutionaries, industrialists, scientists, and high officials have to be inscribedon paper. Verba volent. The agreement signed on April 13, 1972,by spokespersons for the minister and Matra was intended to establish thefinancial participation of each party, to define the prototype, to describethe development phases, to specify who would control the results, to decidewho would possess Aramis' patents and licenses if it were to come intoexistence, to agree on how each party would pay its share, and finally, inthe case of failure, to determine how each one would bow out with dignity,without trials or litigation. But who are Messieurs Petit and Lagardere? Theydo not have an essence that has been fixed once and for all. They canspeak in everyone's name, or no one's; it all depends. Petit may speak forall French people, or for DATAR, or for one of DATAR's departments, or fora member of one of its departments, or in his own name, either as atransportation specialist or as a private individual. He may speak solely inthe name of his own imagination. Someone else, or his own unconscious,may even speak for him. Depending on his relative size, he may captureeveryone's attention for ten years, or that of just one person for a mereinstant. He may be called Mr. Large or Mr. Small. Here we have an essenceso elastic that a single sentence, "Mr. Petit is interested in the project," maybe translated into a whole gamut of sentences, from "50 million FrenchmenAN EXCITING INNOVAT ION