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

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generating interest, which linked up a crowd with a project, is now addedthe task of protection; this consists in rendering harmless the behavior of adifferent crowd, made up of intruders, bugs, troublemakers who've shownup uninvited. The system has to be made idiot-proof. This applies to relationsamong human beings-you have to prevent passengers from comingto blows. It also applies to relations among humans and nonhumans-youhave to prevent people from getting caught in doors, and from being ableto jam the doors. It applies as well to relations among non humans-youhave to prevent bugs in the chips from continually setting off the emergencybrake. It applies to a completed transportation system that is actuallyworking full scale, and it applies to a project for developing a transportationsystem that is designed to work full scale. The difference between thetwo is precisely the taking into account of an infinite number of unanticipateddetails that have to be mastered or done away with one by one. Thisis the beginning of a new set of negotiations whose success or failure willmake it possible to modify the relative size of the project over time.Human error is everywhere; so is diabolical wickedness; and imbecilityis common. As for software programs, they go right on makingmistakes without anyone's being able to identify the bugs that have infestedthem. Here is the difference between a project that is not very innovativeand one that is highly innovative. A project is called innovative if thenumber of actors that have to be taken into account is not a given from theoutset. If that number is known in advance, in contrast, the project canfollow quite orderly, hierarchical phases; it can go from office to office,and every office will add the concerns of the actors for which it is responsible.As you proceed along the corridor, the size or degree of reality growsby regular increments. Research projects, on the other hand, do not havesuch an elegant order: the crowds that were thought to be behind theproject disappear without a word; or, conversely, unexpected allies turn upand demand to be taken into account. It's like a reception where the invitedguests have failed to show; in their place, a bunch of unruly louts turn upand ruin everything. In this sense, Aramis is unquestionably a researchproject.The innovator's work is very complicated. Not only does she haveto fight on those two fronts, dealing with supports that are removed andparasites that are added; not only does she have to weave humans andnonhumans together by imposing the politest possible behavior on both;not only does she have to attach nonhumans together; but she also has toIS ARAMIFEASIBLE?
know who, among the engineers, executives, and manufacturers speaksfor the good actors that need to be taken into account. Should the managingdirector order a market study-which would speak in the name ofconsumers-when his technical department is declaring that the project isnot technologically feasible without a revolution in microprocessors? Whomshould he believe? His safety division, which is claiming that you can'tmake a transportation system without intrinsic security, or his commercialdevelopers, for whom vandalism rules out sophisticated systems? Of courseyou have to "take into account" all the elements, as people say ndively, butonly the not very innovative projects know in advance which accountant tobelieve and which accounting system to choose. We use the term "innovative"precisely for a project that requires choosing the right accountant andthe right accounting method, in order to decide which actors are importantand which ones are dangerous. By this measure, yes, Aramis is decidedlyan innovative project."But we have the same problem," I said, rather discouraged, afterreading his commentary in the train that was taking us to Lille to visitthe VAL system. "Who are we supposed to take seriously? Lamoureuxplaces a lot of stress on the failure of the demonstration with Lagardereat the Orly site. The others tell us that that had nothing to do with it.Not until the forty-fifth interview, the one with Cohen, do we hearthat the connection between probabilistic security and Aramis is anabsolutely crucial link that explains the whole project. Other peopleare telling us that 'in any event, in the Paris region, you can neverintroduce radical innovations in public transportation.' 'In any event,'others say, 'it's not a transportation problem; you can never innovateacross the board, and Aramis involves innovations across the board, ineverything: components, functions, manufacturing, applications. Andthe other guy, Chalvon, is telling us that you can't do anything aboutvandalism. It's really kind of discouraging. How can you claim to explainan innovation by taking into account the determining elements if thereare as many lists and hierarchies and ways of accounting for theseelements as there are interviewees?""We are dc-sorcerers, my friend, not accusers. We deal in whiteIS ARIS FEASIBlE8
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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
Page 33 and 34: load fa ctor, Professor? Your isola
Page 35 and 36: if by magic. An electronic calculat
Page 37 and 38: to be invented, if we are to track
Page 39 and 40: ---) TransporterTime IS . ; To Char
Page 41 and 42: assembly line? You said "transfer"?
Page 43 and 44: primly, without acknowledging my cl
Page 45 and 46: defensive about playing "amusing me
Page 47 and 48: curves: DATAR, the RATP, Paris, bef
Page 49 and 50: fellow. It's like the Galileo affai
Page 51 and 52: Time To-1 2 3 4 5CJIII __ _ Time T1
Page 53 and 54: fic off the roads , it improve s tr
Page 55 and 56: ter-who speaks in the name of the g
Page 57 and 58: are solemnly and eternally committe
Page 59 and 60: me, Aramis isn't a PRT Iype of tran
Page 61 and 62: Aeroport de Paris said. IF you map
Page 63 and 64: IS ARAMIS FEASIBLE?"Now we can go o
Page 65 and 66: workshop, a control post, a recepti
Page 67 and 68: the optical sensor so it will maint
Page 69 and 70: evolutionary system of transportati
Page 71 and 72: "For my part, " the motor declares,
Page 73 and 74: -otherwise, it instructs the car to
Page 75 and 76: not only determined the laws accord
Page 77 and 78: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Lamoureux, r
Page 79 and 80: they have to change the motor, mult
Page 81 and 82: there would be a lot of new functio
Page 83: "The idea was that it was seductive
Page 87 and 88: of admiring the architecture, the s
Page 89 and 90: control room, by Ferbeck (who is al
Page 91 and 92: has the massive dimensions it takes
Page 93 and 94: come back to print. The whole passa
Page 95 and 96: "Do you comprehend the crime, the u
Page 97 and 98: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)At Matra headqu
Page 99: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M, Parlat, proi
Page 102 and 103: Stationl00o
Page 104 and 105: destinations: that's the idea that
Page 106 and 107: the network, all the problems of au
Page 108 and 109: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Etienne, hea
Page 110 and 111: ody can commit himself; it's imposs
Page 112 and 113: configuration on the board. Besides
Page 114 and 115: to the real transportation system,
Page 116 and 117: As a young engineer, I refused to c
Page 118 and 119: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)In M. Hector's
Page 120 and 121: [INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]M. Parlat is sp
Page 122 and 123: did his field work in the Amazon ra
Page 124 and 125: What counts, in a technological pro
Page 126 and 127: "That's an interesting theory all r
Page 128 and 129: "With VAL, we moved gradually from
Page 130 and 131: hard; you'd need to build it into t
Page 132 and 133: 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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"We've found the hidden staircase,"
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dominated by, people. But there is
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-Vehicle110,000f-PCC spervisio Stat
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[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS]-M. Freque, pro
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problem. This task, for the project
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"What I think is that the Matra eng
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"As for the automation, I agree wit
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inappropriate, as if it were clear
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PIaorm 1X" StationI / Plaorm 2Subst
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"Level III: the fixed equipment, ea
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But since you're not human, I'd be
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--wheels, supply information about
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little I was becoming the Aramis mo
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the cars located in the sector, as
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So it givesa recalibration that'sre
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OrdinateViewpoint of mobile unit/I-
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Phonic wheelCoded equidistant cross
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"Here deceleration has to be factor
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[DOCUMENT]code 5800 .2ORI 10 0 0 00
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Norbert woke up terrified.The next
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This is the case for the Matra comp
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This figure, in the context of the
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short-term vision. 'As long as ther
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1. What M. Brun needs; what hechoos
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ecause if someone says, 'After fift
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Well then, that's reassuring. I sta
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thing, give or take a nuance or two
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that's too bad Obviously, to go fro
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They sound awfully sure of themselv
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"Either they didn't put enough ener
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Phase 1: Concept development5phose
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VAL. You'll see, we're going to fin
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on on ongoing basis how things are
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7. Aramis has been perfected as a m
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of a network, to the extent that th
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"Are they interested in elected off
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"But then why not say it was resear
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when we talked about it. The electe
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"No, no, not enough love! Love and
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ahout each other in strict confiden
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"Yet in spite of its fragility, its
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to be a line. What more could I ask
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things. That's not what brought my
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"Obligation to use all appropriate
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" Prometheus. ""Prometheus! The 'sm
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GLOSSARYA-320 An airplane built by
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BertinBienvenueBus DivisionCabinent
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tems to be controlled in the car (d
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E:'2the ministry's technical dossie
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Porno 2000PrometheusPRTQuinRofoleRa
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sniffer planeSOFRESSOFRETUSouth lin
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BIUND /ATOUI , 01"""of SOOoIogy, £
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