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

control room, by Ferbeck (who is also its father), by Lagardere (who is alsoits father), by the RATP (which claims to be its father), by Aisthom (whichalso claims to be its father)-all these descriptions are going to vary, andespecially on the question of paternity! There are as many points of viewas there are heads. But these points of view are all focused on a commonobject, as if, while walking around a statue, each person were offering adifferent description that was nevertheless compatible with the others. Exceptfor the point of view, the description is the same. VAL, because it exists,unifies points of view. It transforms people's opinions of it into "simple"points of view about an object that remains independent of them. WithAramis there is nothing of the sort. Since it does not exist, it cannot unifypoints of view. There are as many possible Aramises as there are mindsand points of view. Matra's point of view and the RATP's and the ministry'sare irreconcilable; within the RATP, within Matra, within the ministry, individualopinions are equally irreconcilable; the same Matra engineer, fromone interview to another, or the same ministry official, between the beginningof an interview and the end, will also have irreconcilable viewpoints.They really don't know. Their opinions can't agree, since for want ofagreement among them the object has failed to exist independently of them.Schooled by my professors in the culture of objectivity (Norbertcalled my school the College of Unreason, in an allusion to Butler'sbook), I had trouble getting used to the idea that the Aramis actorswere all telling us stories. At Orly, however, they had tried to tell astory that held together. To do so, they had gone ahead and developedbits and pieces in their workshop. They had gone to hangars, tocatalogues, to manufacturers looking for electric motors, auto bodies,laser and ultrasound receptors, chips, concrete-and-steel sandwiches,feeder rails, electric circuits, emergency brakes, doors, and-to makeit all work-activators with little electric motors. They really did tryto bind all the different elements together. But Aramis didn't hold up.It turned back into a heap of disconnected scrap metal.I had my own private interpretation, but I no longer dared expressit to Norbert. Aramis didn't hold up because it was untenable. Period.From the very beginning, it was a fiction, a utopia, a two-headed calf.IS ARAlVl IS FEASIBLE2