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Aramis, or The Love of Technology
A guided-transportation system intended for Paris, Aramis represented a major advance in personal rapid transit: it combined the efficiency of a subway with the flexibility of an automobile. But in the end, its electronic couplings proved too complex and expensive, the political will failed, and the project died in 1987. The story of Aramis is told by several different parties, none of which take precedence over any other: a young engineer and his professor, who act as detective 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: technological innovation has needs and desires, especially a desire to be born, but cannot live without the sustained commitment of those who have created it.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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776 people want to read
About the author
Bruno Latour
163 books767 followersBruno Latour, a philosopher and anthropologist, is the author of Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, Our Modern Cult of the Factish Gods, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, and many other books. He curated the ZKM exhibits ICONOCLASH and Making Things Public and coedited the accompanying catalogs, both published by the MIT Press.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 22, 2011
I was inordinately hesitant to dive into this book, which had been billed to me as "Bruno Latour at his weirdest." What I knew going in was that it was meant to be an account of a failed public transportation system in France, narrated from the point of view of the system ("Aramis") itself. This was partially right, as there were indeed sections of the book in which Aramis was allowed to speak. However, these sections were balanced by extensive accounts of Latour, his mentor, direct quotes from interview subjects, and long selections from official documents. It was the perfect postmodern text -- a true patchwork of opinions and ideas that not only made the entire investigation into why Aramis failed far more transparent than a traditional academic book would have, but also allowed its readers to understand how such an investigation would/could be conducted in the first place. I honestly can't believe I was never assigned to read this in any of my coursework, as it seems like it would be a natural fit into any methods course (and would add so much to traditional methods readings, which are inordinately dry and dull considering, in my case, they are meant to describe ethnography). Moreover, I'm sort of sad that this mode of producing ethnography never really caught on. It's far less teleological than most.
July 26, 2024
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.'"
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.'"
December 9, 2021
This book is very thought provoking, in terms of how large distributed engineering projects can have unexpected externalities when you try to scale up proof of concepts with real world conditions. I like that it points out that research costs are part of innovation and not a failure. It's also really interesting to compare the state of computing, sensor and motor technology in the 70s/80s to now, and how much these technologies had to improve just to get rudimentary self driving vehicles.
However, in the middle of the book it starts going off into weird tangents that are the worst type of writing to come out of the humanities. The author seems obsessed with similarities between disparate fields like sociology to physics and theology, but these similarities never rise to a theory that is predictive of anything, and so really at least 100 pages of this book just amounts to shower thoughts. The other 200 pages has some interesting history of engineering material.
However, in the middle of the book it starts going off into weird tangents that are the worst type of writing to come out of the humanities. The author seems obsessed with similarities between disparate fields like sociology to physics and theology, but these similarities never rise to a theory that is predictive of anything, and so really at least 100 pages of this book just amounts to shower thoughts. The other 200 pages has some interesting history of engineering material.
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February 4, 2024my profs called this scrapbook-y
October 8, 2018
Aramis tells the story of the birth and death of a high-tech public transportation project. The story is told not only from the viewpoint of reports on the failure of the project, but also from the viewpoint of Aramis itself, also mixing in expositions on the nature of technology, and interviews with the main actors in what appears to be a really complicated affair. The conundrum the author is after: Why did such a promising project, into which millions of francs were invested in 13 years, and positive reports of progress were written in regular intervals, suddenly get cancelled without getting deployed anywhere?
The answer lies, according to Latour, in te nature of high-tech innovation. Before they become "objects" that are out there and used by people, technological visions are vaguely overlapping fields of interest through which different groups aim to achieve different things. As the subject of the project becomes 'objectified' more and more, these fields converge through compromises and realignments. In the case of Aramis, the RER, RATP, ministry of transport and the realizing company each had different interests, but assumed that the technology created would carry the project forward, giving it a reason to exist and a momentum. What they forgot, or didn't care about,according to Latour, was the fact that before becoming objects,technological entities need love and caring from their creators. Specifically, they have to be argued for, represented, taken sides with etc. Latour makes this point regarding the love affair between a technological creation and its creator through comparisons with Frankenstein, the prototypical creator vs. creation story.
Latour tries to depict what he calls 'the mush of innovation' through the use of multiple voices and perspectives, including the narrative voice of the reporters, excerpts from interviews, heartfelt complaints from Aramis itself, and dialogues between Dr. Frankenstein and his creation. Because of this varied mixture, and the frequent change of voices, in the end, the book becomes a mush itself, with the reader losing sight of what she is reading now, and what purpose it serves in understanding innovative technological research. What I found particularly annoying were the romantic passages from the voice of Aramis and Frankenstein's monster. Interspersed between the earthly engineering discussions and pragmatic business calculations, these monologues were a huge distraction.
Thanks to Latour's observational acumen and sociological insights,however, the book is full of interesting points on the nature of innovation and research. Regarding big and complicated projects,Latour points out that these are impossible to separate into neat stages that can be completed one after the other, because the outcome is a matter of negotiation itself. Because of this, the project is always in that narrow strait between dead and close to completion. It is very difficult to gauge whether what has been established is just the basics, or the grunt of the work, leaving only the details. This is very similar to the software developers' mantra ""The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time; the remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time". Another interesting point concerns the relationship between common sense and innovation. Once they are produced, innovative objects are 'perfect': Their initial conception or an imperfect copy is what you hold in your hand, and it had to be this way if you look at the function of the object in a sensible light, or so the story goes. This is far from the truth when one pays attention to how they are brought to being. Innovations create common sense, building it along the way. An innovation that doesn't invent common sense is an oxymoron.
All in all, Aramis or the love of technology is a very valuable read for anyone who builds technological objects, even though it's a bit difficult to follow and 'novelistic' for its own good.
The answer lies, according to Latour, in te nature of high-tech innovation. Before they become "objects" that are out there and used by people, technological visions are vaguely overlapping fields of interest through which different groups aim to achieve different things. As the subject of the project becomes 'objectified' more and more, these fields converge through compromises and realignments. In the case of Aramis, the RER, RATP, ministry of transport and the realizing company each had different interests, but assumed that the technology created would carry the project forward, giving it a reason to exist and a momentum. What they forgot, or didn't care about,according to Latour, was the fact that before becoming objects,technological entities need love and caring from their creators. Specifically, they have to be argued for, represented, taken sides with etc. Latour makes this point regarding the love affair between a technological creation and its creator through comparisons with Frankenstein, the prototypical creator vs. creation story.
Latour tries to depict what he calls 'the mush of innovation' through the use of multiple voices and perspectives, including the narrative voice of the reporters, excerpts from interviews, heartfelt complaints from Aramis itself, and dialogues between Dr. Frankenstein and his creation. Because of this varied mixture, and the frequent change of voices, in the end, the book becomes a mush itself, with the reader losing sight of what she is reading now, and what purpose it serves in understanding innovative technological research. What I found particularly annoying were the romantic passages from the voice of Aramis and Frankenstein's monster. Interspersed between the earthly engineering discussions and pragmatic business calculations, these monologues were a huge distraction.
Thanks to Latour's observational acumen and sociological insights,however, the book is full of interesting points on the nature of innovation and research. Regarding big and complicated projects,Latour points out that these are impossible to separate into neat stages that can be completed one after the other, because the outcome is a matter of negotiation itself. Because of this, the project is always in that narrow strait between dead and close to completion. It is very difficult to gauge whether what has been established is just the basics, or the grunt of the work, leaving only the details. This is very similar to the software developers' mantra ""The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time; the remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time". Another interesting point concerns the relationship between common sense and innovation. Once they are produced, innovative objects are 'perfect': Their initial conception or an imperfect copy is what you hold in your hand, and it had to be this way if you look at the function of the object in a sensible light, or so the story goes. This is far from the truth when one pays attention to how they are brought to being. Innovations create common sense, building it along the way. An innovation that doesn't invent common sense is an oxymoron.
All in all, Aramis or the love of technology is a very valuable read for anyone who builds technological objects, even though it's a bit difficult to follow and 'novelistic' for its own good.
February 27, 2008
In grad school, I studied how science and technology are altered by (and alter) our perceptions of reality. I read this book 3 times and each time I found new ideas floating in this love story on (rumination about) a failed technology.
November 8, 2024
Now I know Why ARAMIS Failed and Now I will make it Myself and Be a Chiekn Winner. I will build a network of humans and nonhumans!!! Unite!!!!!!! Yay. And I will use translations. I will not expect my ARAMIS to be perfect . Instead wehn I make it I shall give it the ability to adapt and change . I love ARAMIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Unlike Victor Frankenstein i shall Not chase my creation out the Lab...
December 8, 2023
Si vous n'arrivez pas à voir la beauté dans ce livre je vous plains. Quelle œuvre, quel O.V.NI ! C'était un véritable plaisir à étudier en cours. Un casse-tête romantique dont je me souviendrais. 4,5 ☆
February 23, 2025
An interesting science/fiction/historical ethnography that analyzes the death of the Aramis transit system that could've been in Paris.
well written in the sense that it documents what happened to the Aramis system. Though, I prefer non-fiction and it would be interesting to see an analytical piece. Regardless, the fiction makes this book an engaging read.
well written in the sense that it documents what happened to the Aramis system. Though, I prefer non-fiction and it would be interesting to see an analytical piece. Regardless, the fiction makes this book an engaging read.
August 4, 2014
This a weird book in which Latour mixes sociological commentary proper with a lot of excerpts from official documents and interviews, all contained in a novel-like narrative framework: the story of a student, a young engineer, who works with a professor of sociology in order to unravel the mystery of ”who killed Aramis?”. Who is Aramis? Well, it a was public transportation project in France which lasted for about two decades, but never came to fruition, despite the hundreds of millions of francs spent on it. The fact that the student is an engineer and the professor a sociologist, allows Latour to sketch two conflicting (one might say even opposite) views on the same topic. Aramis seems like an utopian kind of transportation, a hybrid between public and private transportation (I suggest you google about it and PRT), but engineers worked on it for two decades and deemed it possible. So why didn't it work out? The book is interesting as an investigation: the characters analyze interviews with clerks, politicians, engineers, businessmen, etc. It is also interesting in the way Latour uses the case to argue the usefulness and suitability of his new kind of sociology, mostly centred around the actor-network theory. The structure of the book is perhaps experimental and it may not please many people: it's not a proper academic sociological study, a scientific one, and it's not a proper novel, and it certainly isn't a technological study either and it won't satisfy any of the related expectations, criteria, standards, etc. It's a hybrid. Engineers will be annoyed by the sociological commentary, sociologists by the tonnes (I mean it) of technological details. Lay readers will the find the latter parts of the text overwhelming and the former not serious. The ideas in the book are also repetitive, but intentionally so, and I think the dialogue between the student and the professor is stretched in terms of ideas and positions. The characters and their interaction are obviously only a vehicle for Latour's ideas (like in a fable where everything is simply meant to build up to a certain lesson, the morale), that it's hard to take them seriously.
So, a weird book, a only partly successful experiment, but still interesting (especially if you get past the first 80-100 pages, which might be difficult). I liked it as an investigation proper and also as a model or guide for research and unconventional theorizing.
So, a weird book, a only partly successful experiment, but still interesting (especially if you get past the first 80-100 pages, which might be difficult). I liked it as an investigation proper and also as a model or guide for research and unconventional theorizing.
February 12, 2009
The Aramis book is a meta dialog by a sociologist about the development of a technology, how project structure, etc. evolved, grew and interacted with the world. It begins with the question "Who killed Aramis (the project)?" and bounces back and forth between details of the 20 year long project, and generalities about society, technology, culture, etc.
As they say 'the journey is the reward' and in this book that's really where the meat is. The analysis of how the people involved in the project shifted position, changed their own description of their attitude toward the technology, is particularly revealing. Very political from the start, the Aramis project's fortunes were more determined by patronage than by consumer concern.
The Aramis system is a form of "Personal Rapid Transit" and I have further online reading links in delicious under the keywords transportation and prt.
As they say 'the journey is the reward' and in this book that's really where the meat is. The analysis of how the people involved in the project shifted position, changed their own description of their attitude toward the technology, is particularly revealing. Very political from the start, the Aramis project's fortunes were more determined by patronage than by consumer concern.
The Aramis system is a form of "Personal Rapid Transit" and I have further online reading links in delicious under the keywords transportation and prt.
December 3, 2010
I found this rather disappointing. I'm fairly familiar with Latour's ideas (ANT, agency of objects etc.), having read some of his writing and those of others who like his work. I've decided to try and read more of his famous books, and this was the first I came upon. It began well, but soon just seemed to get very repetitive with him belaboring each point. It seems to me that there were some pretty serious flaws in the arguments presented in this book and I remain unconvinced by the value of ANT. Perhaps I'm just dumb, but his points seem to be rather obvious and often seem to be simply 'language games'. Maybe when he wrote this his ideas were really original. I guess I should try the Pasteurization of France before I give up on him!
January 6, 2025
*Aramis* is perhaps a strange pick for my favorite book of the year. Ostensibly, it's about a failed attempt to put a personalized rapid transit system in Paris. Really though, it's about how we shape technology, and technology shapes us. The narration shifts between a graduate student trying to unravel the history of Aramis, documents and interviews, an extended *Frankenstein* allegory, and pleas from the Aramis system itself. The genre is unlike anything I've read (the foreword notes it may be closest to *Galatea 2.2* but I've not read that); the closest analogy I can think of is a detective story. It's a weird one for sure, but every choice about it that was weird worked for me. I should read Latour's more popular work, but I'm a little afraid I'd be let down.
May 29, 2012
I was expecting more philosophy, but this is really a book about ARAMIS--the French personal rapid transit project that never came to fruition. Now I know basically everything about personal rapid transit--particularly non-material couplings...but if that's your thing, this is a great book.
April 4, 2017
This was a sort of fun book to read. I was afraid when I first started it that it would be hard to read, since Latour is part of the "post-modern" crowd, and a post-modern work about the death of a technology sounded like it would be very hard to understand. Instead, it was written like a murder mystery, wherein two scientist "detectives" try to determine who killed this train system and why. I won't spoil the ending by telling you the culprits...
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