Customer Reviews

Aramis, or the Love of Technology

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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

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.

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.

I hated this book for all the same reasons that the previous reviewer loved it. Latour's voice changes add some depth to the story, but are done in a manner so convoluted that much of the substance is lost. Using Aramis itself as the voice of martyred technology just becomes increasingly absurd throughout the book. There are much better books than this out there about man's relationship with technology, do yourself a favor and find one of them.