A review by nickfourtimes
Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

 

1) "Can we unravel the tortuous history of a state-of-the-art technology from beginning to end, as a lesson to the engineers, decisionmakers, and users whose daily lives, for better or for worse, depend on such technology? Can we make the human sciences capable of comprehending the machines they view as inhuman, and thus reconcile the educated public with bodies it deems foreign to the social realm? Finally, can we turn a technological object into the central character of a narrative, restoring to literature the vast territories it should never have given up namely, science and technology?

Three questions, a single case study in scientifiction."

2) "'You see, my friend, how precise and sophisticated our informants are,' Norbert commented as he reorganized his notecards. 'They talk about Oedipus and about proximate causes... They know everything. They're doing our sociology for us, and doing it better than we can; it's not worth the trouble to do more. You see? Our job is a cinch. We just follow the players. They all agree, in the end, about the death of Aramis. They blame each other, of course, but they speak with one voice: the proximate cause of death is of no interest-it's just a final blow, a last straw, a ripe fruit, a mere consequence. As M. Girard said so magnificently, 'It was built right into the nature of things.' There's no point in deciding who finally killed Aramis. It was a collective assassination. An abandonment, rather. It's useless to get bogged down concentrating on the final phase. What we have to do is see who built those 'things' in, and into what 'natures.' We're going to have to go back to the beginning of the project, to the remote causes. And remember, this business went on for seventeen years.'"

3) "In the beginning, there is no distinction between projects and objects. The two circulate from office to office in the form of paper, plans, departmental memos, speeches, scale models, and occasional synopses. Here we're in the realm of signs, language, texts. In the end, people, after they leave their offices, are the ones who circulate inside the object. A Copernican revolution. A gulf opens up between the world of signs and the world of things. The R-312 is no longer a novel that carries me away in transports of delight; it's a bus that transports me away from the boulevard Saint-Michel. The observer of technologies has to be very careful not to differentiate too hastily between signs and things, between projects and objects, between fiction and reality, between a novel about feelings and what is inscribed in the nature of things."

4) "The difference between dreams and reality is variable. The guy who spray-paints his innermost feelings on the white walls of the Pigalle metro station may be rebelling against the drab reality of the stations, the cars, the tracks, and the surveillance cameras. His dreams seem to him to be infinitely remote from the harsh truth of the stations, and that's why he signs his name in rage on the white ceramic tiles. The chief engineer who dreams of a speedier metro likewise crosses out plans according to his moods. But if the AT-2000 had been developed, his dream would have become the other's world."

5) "A technological project is neither realistic nor unrealistic; it takes on reality, 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 1.5-kilometer test track that transports engineers from one beet field to another. For this 'engineers' dream' to continue to be realized, other elements have to be added. So can we say that nothing is really real? No. But anything can become more real or less real, depending on the continuous chains of translation. It's essential to continue to generate interest, to seduce, to translate interests. You can't ever stop becoming more real. After the Orly phase, nothing is over, nothing is settled. It's still possible to get along without Aramis. The whole world is still getting along without Aramis."

6) "The time frame for innovations depends on the geometry of the actors, not on the calendar.

The history of Aramis spreads out over eighteen years. Is that a long time, or a short one? Is it too long, or not long enough? That depends. On what? On the work of alliance and translation. Eighteen years is awfully short for a radical innovation that has to modify the behavior of the RATP, Matra, chips, passengers, local officials, variable-reluctance motors— what an appropriate name! Eighteen years is awfully long it the project is dropped every three or four years, if Matra periodically loses interest, if the RATP only believes in it sporadically, if officials don't get excited about it, if microprocessors get involved only at arm's length, if the variable-reluctance motor is reluctant to push the cars. Time really drags."

7) "'Why do we do the sociology and history of technology,' asked my mentor Norbert, with tears in his eyes, 'when the people we interview are such good sociologists, such good historians? There's nothing to add. It's all there. 'Built into the nature of things: there you have it-technology! Insert, engrave, inscribe things within, inside, right in the middle, of nature and they flow on their own, they flow from the source, they become automatic. Give me the remote causes let's go back to the mainsprings of the tragedy give me Matra, the Communists, the Right, the Left, the mayor of Paris, the traitorous technicians; let's put them on stage in 1984... and in 1987, here comes the death blow. An implacable clockwork is operating before our very eyes. And it's he, the company head, who inscribes, who engraves, these things in nature. He himself machine-tools the fatum that is going to bring the plot to its conclusion with no surprises; he's the deus ex machina, the god of machines. Enshrine the interviews and shut up-that's the only role for a good sociologist.'"