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

[INTERVIEW EXCERPTS)At Matra headquarters M. Etienne is speaking."Aramis never had an engine. That was the real problem, the congenitaldefect, all those years "'An engine?""I mean a local engine, a driving force: a politician, an elected offiCial,somebody with pull who would have made it his cause, who would have puthis shoulder to the grindstone, somebody devoted enough, stubborn enough. Somebody like Notebart, who supported VAL in Lille."Every public transportation system is so expensive that it needs a localpolitical engine, a local base, to make it pay off over the years."But Aramis never had that. The godforsaken mess wandered from one endof France to the other and ended up in PariS, where, as it happens, there'snobody in charge of urban transportation. In Paris, it's the worst of solutions,and furthermore it had to fall under the thumb of the RATP, which is an enormousmachine."A technological project is neither realistic nor unrealistic; it takes onreality, or loses it, by degrees.After the Orly phase, called Phase 0, Aramis is merely "realizable";it is not yet "reaL" You can't use the word "real" for a nonfailsafe 1.S-kilometertest track that transports engineers from one beet field to another. Forthis "engineers' dream" to continue to be realized, other elements have tobe added. So can we say that nothing is really real? No. But anything canbecome more real or less real, depending on the continuous chains oftranslation. It's essential to continue to generate interest, to seduce, totranslate interests. You can't ever stop becoming more real. After the Orlyphase, nothing is over, nothing is settled. It's still possible to get alongwithout Aramis. The whole world is still getting along without Aramis.The translation must be continued. What has to be done now is torecruit a "local engine" for this automated transportation system. And thisengine in turn will attract local users, who will have to give up their carsand their buses in favor of Aramis. In order to oblige them, seduce them,compel them, Aramis will have to go exactly where they are headed; it will____________________SHILL Y·S, HAL ,y_iNG·_'_NT_H:SEVENTI ES __ ""1111