Aramis, or the Love of Technology (Paperback)

by Bruno Latour (Author)

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
This quirky book tells the unusual story of an effort by the French government from 1969 to 1987 develop a robotic transit system in Paris. Some 500 million francs were spent in research on the system, which was proposed to take passengers to virtually any stop without going through a transfer. One of its ideas was that the transit car was to split in the middle, carrying passengers on one side of the car to one destination and those on the other side to another. Strange? Yes, but altogether true, and this book tells the story in a manner befitting the experiment. -- Another Amazon.com review:

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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: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #91,091 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #3 in	Books > Nonfiction > Transportation > Mass Transit
  #6 in	Books > Nonfiction > Automotive > Traffic & Safety
  #24 in	Books > History > Europe > France > Paris

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 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 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 7 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

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.

4 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save yourself, you're the only one who can, October 15, 2002

By	Laura Morgan (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.