Aramis, or the Love of Technology [Paperback]

Bruno Latour (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674043235 | ISBN-13: 978-0674043237 | Publication Date: April 1, 1996

Bruno Latour has written a unique and wonderful tale of a technological dream gone wrong. As the young engineer and professor follow Aramis' 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 Rashomon. 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. This charming and profound book, part novel and part sociological study, is Latour at his thought-provoking best.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Packet switching works well for moving data -- why not use it for moving humans? In a nutshell, the French Aramis transit project proposed packet switching as a solution to human transport problems (though, so far as I can tell, neither the author nor any reviews I have yet read have made this connection).

With all the brouhaha about moving bytes around on the information superhighways, moving people around real cities has become less glamorous -- after all, the current mythology is that telecommuting will render the automobile obsolete, right? With the prevailing American tendency to think in terms of technological manifest destiny, stories about superior technologies failing miserably are usually glossed over in an obsession with teleology (history is an inevitable march toward greater perfection).

In contrast, this book describes an extraordinarily well-designed and highly superior semi-personal robotic transit system developed by the French government -- and then squashed by the French government. It is written in a style that only a Gallic scientist could conceive (for example, in a passage about project complexity, Latour writes: ...The monkey is readily identified as a creature of desire...). Because of such stylistic excrescences, I personally I found this book somewhat difficult to read at times, but I recommend it very highly to anyone interested in the history of technology, cross-cultural studies, telecommunications -- or the burgeoning application of packet switching principles to mass transit.

Review

Aramis is a case study, a sociological investigation, and, yes, a detective novel unlike any ever written--a carefully constructed, non-fictional narrative of the negotiated fictions that underwrite our mechanical inventions. Latour, one of the most supple and rewarding practitioners of any science, shows that the construction of technological society is at base a human drama and must be told in a commensurate manner. Here at last is science studies that avoids self-exemption and partakes, with humor and emotion, of the very processes it depicts. Aramis is a strange but deep book that comes to counterintuitive, urgent conclusions, pleading for more successful parlay between technology and humanism, animate and inanimate, body and soul. This story has much to say about the world we want to build, the world we think we are building, and the worlds we have failed to pull off.
--Richard Powers, author of Galatea 2.2 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674043235
• ISBN-13: 978-0674043237
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612,676 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hi-tech novel of Social Adoption of Technology, December 31, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Paperback)

This is a very disturbing but at the same time very thought-provoking book on the adoption of a hypermodern new means of public transportation. Aramis was a small car version of the driverless subway which is now commonly known because of applications in Lille (France) and Orlando (USA)
Latour disguises as a student of engineering sciences and writes a kind of whodunnit on the final question: 'who killed Aramis"? Because he lends his voice to the engineer, to his professor of Sociology,
to the Aramis system itself and to himself as an author, the book shows different views on the same reality.
Highly documented with texts that would be dynamite if they had been published during the development of the Aramis train system itself.
Latour shows why Conservative governments never would adopt really revolutionary developments in public transportation.

At times a difficult book, but hilarious too, and a reader for every technology-minded post-structuralist and post-marxist thinker...

Stefaan Van Ryssen

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All about the intersection, October 4, 2009

By 

Dr. Ronald Fountain (Shaker Heights, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Paperback)

This is an amazing book about the intersection of social and technical systems and how it works, or doesn't. Latour is an outstanding thinker and a writer of equal capability. A glass of brandy and listening to Hayden while reading this work helps to make sense of it.

4 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cool!, August 16, 2006

By 

Bungler Jane (Cambridge, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Paperback)

Well, like it or not - you have to read it. Clear books are boring propaganda. Insightful thoughts are never quite clear. For the clear read your bank statement.