Aramis as Elephant:
How varied paradigms murdered a good idea

Diana Ascher
IS 291B—Special Topics in Theory of Information Studies
Prof. J.F. Blanchette
1/12/13

Aramis as Elephant:
How varied paradigms murdered a good idea

Introduction
There are many ways to analyze Bruno Latour’s Aramis or Love of Technology. I’ve focused on some key elements to help draw out the salient points that would also contribute to my thinking about curiosity, information quality, and long-term decision making. First, I offer an examination of what was lacking in the dynamic of the Aramis project that prevented its success. Next, I reflect on how the literary style Latour chose for this work demonstrates some of the concepts about which he is commenting. Finally, I discuss the distributed monism Latour proposes and the underlying shift from an emphasis on society’s construction of objects and the converse, to a focus on the translations and transactions he suggests create successful shared vision of a project among constituent groups with varied paradigms.
Agencement en Rames Automatisées de Modules Indépendants dans les Stations, or Aramis, was an idea—a concept—that could have revolutionized transportation in Paris by bringing together the most valued aspects of public and private transportation.
The ambitious endeavor was intended to meet the objectives of several different stakeholder groups: engineers, politicians, operators, manufacturers, executives, local officials, and commuters. Each of these groups has its own paradigm within which its members frame the objectives, environment, tasks, and priorities of a project. And each paradigm possesses distinct objectives and expectations about how to achieve them. The members of these groups focused on their paradigmatic objectives for the Aramis project, without much consideration and/or understanding of the perspectives, capabilities, operational constraints, and external pressures facing other project stakeholders.

What I want is to respond to the challenge posed by the mass media - to permit the novel to say what can only be said by narrative—to allow it to be itself. ~ Carlos Fuentes
The approach Latour takes to relating the story of and lessons from the Aramis project is instrumental in revealing the decision-making difficulties that led to the program’s failure to launch. He calls his approach “scientification,” relating true events while retaining creative license to reveal the factors that contributed to Aramis’s demise. The narrative form serves as a mechanism for explaining the events and their effects on the outcome of the project, as well as a methodology in and of itself. Perhaps even more importantly, exposing readers to first-person stakeholder perspectives puts into practice the very mechanism Latour advocates for increasing shared understanding so that a project like Aramis can become a reality.
Latour provides the perspectives of Aramis project constituents (including those of the people studying what went wrong) through first-person accounts of what and how events transpired. Each of the stakeholders provides insight into the decision making that led to pulling the plug on the Aramis project. Project constituents also comment on the lack of knowledge regarding who made certain decisions and why those decisions were made. These accounts serve as lenses (or, as Kuhn would characterize them, paradigms) through which the project is viewed over time. As the narrative evolves, Latour’s Holmes-and-Watson-style quest to identify the Aramis murderer unfolds, adding further personification to a project failure. Ultimately, the narrative paints a picture reminiscent of the blind men and the elephant.
In other words, Aramis died because the people involved did not have a comprehensive and consistent understanding of what the project was and what its measures of success should be. Each stakeholder had different motivations for his or her vision of what Aramis should be. Latour refers to them as “assemblies of spokespersons who bring together, during a single meeting, around a single table, different worlds.” (Latour 1996, p. 42)
It is this single-minded, short-term focus on one’s own paradigmatic objectives that Latour reveals as the root of the failure of Aramis to achieve reality. This is exemplified by the document that the engineering intern and his professor mentor discuss toward the end of the narrative. Both men express delight at the realization that the definition of the Aramis project within the engineering paradigm had not changed in 17 years, indicating the concept of Aramis had not adapted to reflect the varied needs and objectives of the different groups of stakeholders. (Latour 1996, p. 281)

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality. ~ Virginia Woolf
Describing Aramis’s failure to become a reality, Latour questions the very essence of an idea as reality. He says that Aramis was murdered, yet he also says that Aramis really never existed, as the various constituents never had a clear vision of how the idea should manifest as a real entity. Because the project never materialized, Latour says it does not exist as an entity. In Kuhnian terms, an entity is evaluated by a community with a shared recognition of key past achievements, beliefs about what theories are correct, and an understanding of the important problems of the field and methods for solving them. (Sismondo 1994, p. 12) It’s clear at the end of the book that the constituents of the project are not viewing it from the same paradigm, because the descriptions of the project have not been altered to accommodate the needs and abilities of others.
In an effort to frame the project in a way that respects Latour’s definition—yet acknowledges the existence of Aramis as an unmanifested idea—I draw an analogy that, admittedly, will strike some as being in poor taste. If we consider Aramis as a fetus, the decision whether to abort it or carry it to term obviously raises issues in a variety of realms, including religion, medicine, and economics. For an individual to make such a decision, she must have certain types of information, and ascribe value to each type of information she has and acquires. Thus, the fact that she has the opportunity to decide necessitates weighing the options.
Latour says, “All projects are stillborn at the outset. Existence has to be added to them continuously, so they can take on body, can impose their growing coherence on those who argue about them or oppose them.” (Latour 1996, 78)
To translate in terms of Aramis, the fact that a decision could be made to abort the project creates a scenario in which options must be weighed. And the weighing of these options requires information from a variety of realms, including engineering, marketing, finance, human resources, and policy. Decision making in the development of Aramis, however, remained localized within each constituency. Thus, the ability to weigh options was severely compromised to the point that each group functioned with a completely different set of criteria for making decisions, as well as a different set of factors by which value and priorities were determined.

I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love. ~ Leslie Fiedler
While every group seemed interested in the Aramis innovation—claimed to love it—none was willing and/or able to engage in productive discourse to bring the project to fruition. Latour, through the narrative of the professor, explains that the job of an engineer is to raise interest and to convince. (Latour 1996, 34) Clearly, the Aramis concept piqued the interest of each of the constituent groups. However, there was little, if any, attempt to convince the parties to take the idea beyond concept and prototype to make Aramis a reality. Such manifestation would have required negotiation and specification beyond vague signed documents of intent. To drive this point home, Latour lets us hear what Aramis, himself, has to say:
If they cannot reach agreement on my behalf, if they refuse to negotiate with one another over what I am supposed to be, it's because they want me to stay in limbo forever. For them, I'm just something to talk about. A pretext-object. One of those plans that gets passed around for years so long as they don't really exist. No, no, you didn't love me. You loved me as an idea. You loved me as long as I was vague. The proof is that you didn't even agree as to whether I am possible in principle, whether my essence does or does not imply my existence. Even that would be enough for me. Oh, how happy I would be to return to limbo if I knew that I was at least conceivable. I won't be granted even that much. (Latour 1996, 294)

Latour describes in detail how he came to settle on scientification as the format for his research of the Aramis project. This approach emphasizes Latour’s desire to develop a representation of the elephant from the combined accounts of each observer. This methodology implies an omniscience that clearly was not present during the project. However, it speaks to several of Latour’s points.
For example, the format exposes discrepancies in understanding what Aramis means to various parties. Certainly, decisions based on information that does not account for these varied meanings are unlikely to contribute to a project’s success. In fact, success is not even consistently envisaged. On the other hand, failure is easy to identify—Aramis does not exist today (except as a museum exhibit).
Latour’s personification of the Aramis project helps the reader ascertain how different actors ascribe meaning to it. The personification reveals a different way in which the project might have been considered, which likely would have yielded decisions based on more representative information. Had the various actors thought of the project as a living being, the many facets of its existence would have been easier to recognize and contemplate.
Latour proposes that non-human objects and ideas (NHOIs) are or can be active agents of impact on others and the environment, based on scripts that are symmetrical to patterns of behavior. This goes beyond the typical anthropomorphism seen in literature that attributes human characteristics to animals, ascribing motivation and emotion. Latour personifies machines, objects, projects, and even ideas in this case-study-as-narrative novel.
Despite the case-study nature of the work, the expansion of agency to NHOIs can be related easily to other collaborative projects with which the reader is familiar. In other words, the proposition to extend agency to NHOIs is generalizable.
The narrative mode of expression Latour employs has overt, as well as subtle, implications for the reader. The first-person narrative, particularly by NHOIs, explicitly indicates accordance of agency. Perhaps more stealthy is Latour’s word choice; for example, he personifies non-human objects by using the articles he and she, rather than it.
Also, since the narrative is created as the research is conducted, the political backdrop is well documented, on national as well as local and institutional levels. The bureaucracy encountered by the engineer and his mentor contributes to their understanding of the complexity of “doing science.”
From a recordkeeping perspective, the documents examined as evidence don’t encapsulate everything that contributed to the project failure. It is only when the engineering intern finds a particular document that he can make the conclusion and solve the mystery.
The project went on for 20 years. And, it would seem by the accounts from engineers and administrators, incremental progress occurred. However, as Latour exposes in the style of Thomas Kuhn, continuous progress does not manifest into a successful project. Just because the project seemed to progress with the development of specifications and prototypes, in the end there was no progress made. In fact, the resources directed toward the project may have been better allocated to other initiatives with more favorable outcomes. (Sismondo 1994, pp. 12-22)

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. ~ Nikola Tesla
Latour advocates a shift in focus from the belief that society constructs objects and objects construct society to an emphasis on the translations and transactions that exist between objects/technology and society. These translations and transactions result in modifications in both technology and society, creating a shared understanding of what a project is meant to do within a paradigm that embodies the views of many interested parties to the project. This is Latour’s concept of distributed monism: “a technological object—as long as it exists—is the institutionalized transaction through which elements of the actors’ interests are reshaped and translated, while non-human competences are upgraded, shifted, folded or merged.” (Latour 1993, 22) The translation of paradigmatic interests and objectives is instrumental to a concept’s manifestation as a realized institution.

Introduction
There are many ways to analyze Bruno Latour’s Aramis or Love of Technology. I’ve focused on some key elements to help draw out the salient points that would also contribute to my thinking about curiosity, information quality, and long-term decision making. First, I offer an examination of what was lacking in the dynamic of the Aramis project that prevented its success. Next, I reflect on how the literary style Latour chose for this work demonstrates some of the concepts about which he is commenting. Finally, I discuss the distributed monism Latour proposes and the underlying shift from an emphasis on society’s construction of objects and the converse, to a focus on the translations and transactions he suggests create successful shared vision of a project among constituent groups with varied paradigms.

Agencement en Rames Automatisées de Modules Indépendants dans les Stations, or Aramis, was an idea—a concept—that could have revolutionized transportation in Paris by bringing together the most valued aspects of public and private transportation. The ambitious endeavor was intended to meet the objectives of several different stakeholder groups: engineers, politicians, operators, manufacturers, executives, local officials, and commuters.
Each of these groups has its own paradigm within which its members frame the objectives, environment, tasks, and priorities of a project. And each paradigm possesses distinct objectives and expectations about how to achieve them. The members of these groups focused on their paradigmatic objectives for the Aramis project, without much consideration and/or understanding of the perspectives, capabilities, operational constraints, and external pressures facing other project stakeholders.

Latour provides the perspectives of Aramis project constituents (including those of the people studying what went wrong) through first-person accounts of what and how events transpired. Each of the stakeholders provides insight into the decision making that led to pulling the plug on the Aramis project. Project constituents also comment on the lack of knowledge regarding who made certain decisions and why those decisions were made. These accounts serve as lenses (or, as Kuhn would characterize them, paradigms) through which the project is viewed over time. As the narrative evolves, Latour’s Holmes-and-Watson-style quest to identify the Aramis murderer unfolds, adding further personification to a project failure. Ultimately, the narrative paints a picture reminiscent of the blind men and the elephant.
In other words, Aramis died because the people involved did not have a comprehensive and consistent understanding of what the project was and what its measures of success should be. Each stakeholder had different motivations for his or her vision of what Aramis should be. Latour refers to them as “assemblies of spokespersons who bring together, during a single meeting, around a single table, different worlds.” (Latour 1996, p. 42)

It is this single-minded, short-term focus on one’s own paradigmatic objectives that Latour reveals as the root of the failure of Aramis to achieve reality. This is exemplified by the document that the engineering intern and his professor mentor discuss toward the end of the narrative. Both men express delight at the realization that the definition of the Aramis project within the engineering paradigm had not changed in 17 years, indicating the concept of Aramis had not adapted to reflect the varied needs and objectives of the different groups of stakeholders. (Latour 1996, p. 281)

The approach Latour takes to relating the story of and lessons from the Aramis project is instrumental in revealing the decision-making difficulties that led to the program’s failure to launch. He calls his approach “scientification,” relating true events while retaining creative license to reveal the factors that contributed to Aramis’s demise. The narrative form serves as a mechanism for explaining the events and their effects on the outcome of the project, as well as a methodology in and of itself. Perhaps even more importantly, exposing readers to first-person stakeholder perspectives puts into practice the very mechanism Latour advocates for increasing shared understanding so that a project like Aramis can become a reality.

Latour describes in detail how he came to settle on scientification as the format for his research of the Aramis project. This approach emphasizes Latour’s desire to develop a representation of the elephant from the combined accounts of each observer. This methodology implies an omniscience that clearly was not present during the project. However, it speaks to several of Latour’s points.

The narrative mode of expression Latour employs has overt, as well as subtle, implications for the reader. The first-person narrative, particularly by NHOIs, explicitly indicates accordance of agency. Perhaps more stealthy is Latour’s word choice; for example, he personifies non-human objects by using the articles he and she, rather than it.
Also, since the narrative is created as the research is conducted, the political backdrop is well documented, on national as well as local and institutional levels. The bureaucracy encountered by the engineer and his mentor contributes to their understanding of the complexity of “doing science.”

Latour’s personification of the Aramis project helps the reader ascertain how different actors ascribe meaning to it. The personification reveals a different way in which the project might have been considered, which likely would have yielded decisions based on more representative information. Had the various actors thought of the project as a living being, the many facets of its existence would have been easier to recognize and contemplate.
Latour proposes that non-human objects and ideas (NHOIs) are or can be active agents of impact on others and the environment, based on scripts that are symmetrical to patterns of behavior. This goes beyond the typical anthropomorphism seen in literature that attributes human characteristics to animals, ascribing motivation and emotion. Latour personifies machines, objects, projects, and even ideas in this case-study-as-narrative novel.
Despite the case-study nature of the work, the expansion of agency to NHOIs can be related easily to other collaborative projects with which the reader is familiar. In other words, the proposition to extend agency to NHOIs is generalizable.
The format exposes discrepancies in understanding what Aramis means to various parties. Certainly, decisions based on information that does not account for these varied meanings are unlikely to contribute to a project’s success. In fact, success is not even consistently envisaged. On the other hand, failure is easy to identify—Aramis does not exist today (except as a museum exhibit).⁠1

Describing Aramis’s failure to become a reality, Latour questions the very essence of an idea as reality. He says that Aramis was murdered, yet he also says that Aramis really never existed, as the various constituents never had a clear vision of how the idea should manifest as a real entity. Because the project never materialized, Latour says it does not exist as an entity. In Kuhnian terms, an entity is evaluated by a community with a shared recognition of key past achievements, beliefs about what theories are correct, and an understanding of the important problems of the field and methods for solving them. (Sismondo 1994, p. 12) It’s clear at the end of the book that the constituents of the project are not viewing it from the same paradigm, because the descriptions of the project have not been altered to accommodate the needs and abilities of others.
The project went on for 20 years. And, it would seem by the accounts from engineers and administrators, incremental progress occurred. However, as Latour exposes in the style of Thomas Kuhn, continuous progress does not manifest into a successful project. Just because the project seemed to progress with the development of specifications and prototypes, in the end there was no progress made. In fact, the resources directed toward the project may have been better allocated to other initiatives with more favorable outcomes. (Sismondo 1994, pp. 12-22)
In an effort to frame the project in a way that respects Latour’s definition—yet acknowledges the existence of Aramis as an unmanifested idea—I draw an analogy that, admittedly, will strike some as being in poor taste. If we consider Aramis as a fetus, the decision whether to abort it or carry it to term obviously raises issues in a variety of realms, including religion, medicine, and economics. For an individual to make such a decision, she must have certain types of information, and ascribe value to each type of information she has and acquires. Thus, the fact that she has the opportunity to decide necessitates weighing the options.
Latour says, “All projects are stillborn at the outset. Existence has to be added to them continuously, so they can take on body, can impose their growing coherence on those who argue about them or oppose them.” (Latour 1996, 78)
To translate in terms of Aramis, the fact that a decision could be made to abort the project creates a scenario in which options must be weighed. And the weighing of these options requires information from a variety of realms, including engineering, marketing, finance, human resources, and policy. Decision making in the development of Aramis, however, remained localized within each constituency. Thus, the ability to weigh options was severely compromised to the point that each group functioned with a completely different set of criteria for making decisions, as well as a different set of factors by which value and priorities were determined.
While every group seemed interested in the Aramis innovation—claimed to love it—none was willing and/or able to engage in productive discourse to bring the project to fruition. Latour, through the narrative of the professor, explains that the job of an engineer is to raise interest and to convince. (Latour 1996, 34) Clearly, the Aramis concept piqued the interest of each of the constituent groups. However, there was little, if any, attempt to convince the parties to take the idea beyond concept and prototype to make Aramis a reality. Such manifestation would have required negotiation and specification beyond vague signed documents of intent. To drive this point home, Latour lets us hear what Aramis, himself, has to say:
If they cannot reach agreement on my behalf, if they refuse to negotiate with one another over what I am supposed to be, it's because they want me to stay in limbo forever. For them, I'm just something to talk about. A pretext-object. One of those plans that gets passed around for years so long as they don't really exist. No, no, you didn't love me. You loved me as an idea. You loved me as long as I was vague. The proof is that you didn't even agree as to whether I am possible in principle, whether my essence does or does not imply my existence. Even that would be enough for me. Oh, how happy I would be to return to limbo if I knew that I was at least conceivable. I won't be granted even that much. (Latour 1996, 294)

Latour advocates a shift in focus from the belief that society constructs objects and objects construct society to an emphasis on the translations and transactions that exist between objects/technology and society. These translations and transactions result in modifications in both technology and society, creating a shared understanding of what a project is meant to do within a paradigm that embodies the views of many interested parties to the project. This is Latour’s concept of distributed monism: “a technological object—as long as it exists—is the institutionalized transaction through which elements of the actors’ interests are reshaped and translated, while non-human competences are upgraded, shifted, folded or merged.” (Latour 1993, 22) The translation of paradigmatic interests and objectives is instrumental to a concept’s manifestation as a realized institution.

Conclusion
Latour uses the first-person accounts and interview transcripts to uncover the interests of each stakeholder group, as well as the obliviousness each has for the motivations of the other. Had there been—as Aramis exclaims—negotiating, fighting, and discourse, the focus of the project would have shifted from the poles of society and technology to the fertile field of translations and transactions that could have produced a realized, institutionalized Aramis.
Key to such discourse is the requirement that non-human objects acquire agency. While Latour has more recently rejected actor-network theory, there are elements of it that can be applied to projects like Aramis. The method by which Latour exposes us to the varied interests within each stakeholder paradigm is replicated by giving voice to non-human objects during project development. If the perspectives of non-human objects are contemplated during every stage leading to the manifestation of a concept in an institutionalized reality, the multiple actors who shape the outcome of the project create a bond between humans and things, which is essential for success.
Much of the confusion about what Aramis meant to different groups and how the project would manifest could have been avoided had a systematic approach to long-term decision making been implemented across constituencies. Instead, decisions were so opaque that it could not be determined by most of the people involved who pounded the final nail into Aramis’s coffin.

1 See an image of the exhibit at the bottom of the references page.

References

Bruno Latour, Aramis or the Love of Technology. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Bruno Latour, “Ethnography of a “High-tech” Case—about Aramis” in Lemonnier. Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 372-398, 1993.
Sergio Sismondo, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies. Blackwell, 2004.