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Aramis, or the Love of Technology
 
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Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Paperback)

by B Latour (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Description

Product Description

Frankenstein's monster was born of human endeavour and 19th-century ignominious end but provided many lessons during his 24 years of plans and prototypes. Aramis, the guided-transportation system intended for Paris, represented a major advance in "personal rapid transit" - a system that combined the efficiency of a subway with the flexibility of the private automobile. But in the end, the system of electronic couplings proved too complex and expensive, the political will failed, and the plans were jettisoned in 1987. The story of Aramis, of its birth and death, is told here by several different parties, none of which is given precedence over any other: an engineer and his professor, who together act as "detectives" to ferret out the reasons for the project's failure; company executives and elected officials; a sociologist; and finally Aramis itself, who delivers a passionate plea on behalf of technological innovations that risk being abandoned by their makers. Technology has needs and desires, especially a desire to be born, but cannot function without the sustained commitment of those who have created it. Part novel and part sociological study, Bruno Latour has written a tale of a technological dream gone wrong. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis's trail - conducting interviews, analyzing documents, assessing the evidence - perspectives keep shifting: the truth is revealed as multilayered, unascertainable, comprising an array of possibilities worthy of "Rasbomon". The reader is eventually led to see the project from the point of view of Aramis, and along the way gains insight into the relationship between human beings and their technological creations.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars strange, but true!, 14 May 2001
By A Customer
Warning - do not read this book if you expct answers! Do read this book if you are fascinated by the multi-layered nature of births, and deaths, of modern technologies. In Aramis, Latour attempts the invention of a new literary genre -'scientifiction'. It seems his aim is to describe the strange genesis of technological inventions, from their inception as 'ideas', through their many states of change, to their sucessful 'birth' or consequent termiantion. The book is a hybrid, both of form and content - being neither fully fiction, nor plainly scientific report. Latour, weaves a narrative network that takes the reader on a journey through the all stages of technological creation, political, ethical, social, scientific, economic. But more than this, the story of Aramis is the story of the desperate attempt of a piece of technology to become; to be endowed with life in the realm of public transport, and so cease being an abstract idea and become a concrete thing. A strange, but strangely compelling read.
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