Aramis, or the Love of Technology

Aramis, or the Love of Technology

First edition (French)
Author	Bruno Latour
Translator	Catherine Porter
Language	English
Publisher	La Découverte (France) Harvard University Press (US)
Publication date	1993
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	336 (english translation)
ISBN	978-0-674-04323-7
OCLC	277985319

Aramis, or the Love of Technology was written by French sociologist/anthropologist Bruno Latour. Aramis was originally published in French in 1993; the English translation by Catherine Porter, copyrighted in 1996, ISBN 978-0-674-04323-7, is now in its fourth printing (2002). Latour describes his text as "scientifiction," which he describes as "a hybrid genre... for a hybrid task" (p. ix). The genre includes voices of a young engineer discussing his "sociotechnological initiation," his professor's commentary which introduces Actor-network theory (ANT), field documents - including real-life interviews, and the voice of Aramis—a failed technology ( p. x).

The book is a quasi-mystery, which attempts to discover who killed Aramis (personal rapid transit). Aramis was supposed to be implemented as a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system in Paris. Simultaneously, while investigating Aramis's demise, Latour delineates the tenets of Actor-network theory. Latour argues that the technology failed not because any particular actor killed it, but because the actors failed to sustain it through negotiation and adaptation to a changing social situation.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Prologue: Who Killed Aramis?

1. An Exciting Innovation
2. Is Aramis Feasible?
3. Shilly-Shallying in the Seventies
4. Interphase: Three Years of Grace
5. The 1984 Decision: Aramis Exists for Real
6. Aramis at the CET Stage: Will it Keep its Promise?
7. Aramis is Ready to Go (Away)

• Epilogue: Aramis Unloved
• Glossary

See also

• Laboratory Life (with Steve Woolgar)
• Science in Action (book)
• Politics of Nature
• We Have Never Been Modern