Aramis
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.
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- Latour’s “Aramis, or The Love of Technology” is one of my favorite books. It’s the story, at many levels, of a personal transport system and more.
- Lots of options out there. A few from my bookshelf: Bijker's "Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs" is a case-study-centric work that seeks to build a general theory of STS. Nye's "Technology Matters" is less a work of theory than a critique that poses core questions about how society should seek to integrate technical advances. Latour's "Science in Action," "Reassembling the Social," and "Aramis" are great examples of his approach to whole-of-system analysis of sociotechnical systems. Rogers' "Diffusion of Innovation" is a classic work theorizing how innovation is communicated through social networks.
MIT Press has a wide variety of books that cover specific topics in history, most of which have great theoretic interest: Agar's "The Government Machine," dealing with the evolution of technology and expertise within the UK government; Medina's "Cybernetic Revolutionaries," about Beer's Cybersyn project; and Ensmenger's "The Computer Boys Take Over," about the cultural development of the "programmer," are all great reads.
Also, you can look beyond pure technology for interesting adjacencies: for example, Schatz's "The Genius of the System" describes how changes in technology and management production radically upended Hollywood, resulting in the studio system that dominated from the 1930s through the 1950s, while Harris' "Pictures at a Revolution" picks up the pieces at the end of that system, discussing the rise of "New Hollywood," driven by cultural and technical (particularly the French use of inexpensive filming technologies to create the New Wave) forces.
- > This, in essence, is the premise of Latour’s latest book, “Down to Earth,” an illuminating and counterintuitive analysis of the present post-truth moment, which will be published in the United States next month.
Ah, that's why this article exists - he's got a book to promote.
Despite that, it's a good read and an important discussion to have, and one that's at great risk of misinterpretation. What Latour and others are discussing is not the idea that there isn't an external reality, but that what we know about reality is inevitably filtered by our perception, which includes our social, economic and institutional contexts. Latour's questioning of scientism pre-dates the modern problems of nonreproducibility, p-hacking etc.
I would also recommend Latour's work Aramis. The French government attempted an extremely Elon Musk personal transit system in the 80s, and Latour examines why it failed. Perhaps to be read alongside Feynman writing about Challenger in the same timeframe.
Edit: in re climate skepticism, have a look at the Introduction of https://ecomig2014.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/178919402-lat... - which is a serious inquiry into the question of why climate scientists are or aren't believed.
- I have to recommend "Aramis, or the Love of Technology" by Bruno Latour. It's an account of the development of a failed personal mass transit system that's both brilliant and very beautiful.
- "Aramis, or the Love of Technology" is a fascinating book on the attempted launch of such a system in Paris.
https://www.amazon.com/Aramis-Love-Technology-Bruno-Latour/d...
- Not that I'm consciously aware of, but I may have subconsciously lifted it from somewhere. "Made man in My image" is of course from Genesis.
The idea of technology making or remaking man rather than the other way round is definitely part of Futurism, Modernism and to some extent Bolshevism. I'd suggest reading Bruno Latour on the subject, especially "Aramis, or the Love of Technology".
