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Tapscott, Don. The Digital Economy: Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995.
Aramis or the Love of Technology. Bruno Latour. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
At a faculty party a number of years ago, my husband (an anthropologist) and I met another couple. She was an eminent biological scientist, and he was a political scientist. The discussion began congenially enough, but we soon got around to the topic of research. My husband and I described our various projects-research that used more qualitative than quantitative measures and that accepted the socially constructed nature of human actions. Our interlocutors were horrified, especially because much of my research involved studies of medical education. The conversation degenerated into exchanged charges of relativism and positivism. As we parted ways (much to the relief of our host), the extraordinary gulf that lies between the sciences and the humanities once more became apparent to me. It is this chasm of misunderstanding that Bruno Latour tries to address in Aramis or the Love of Technology.
As a genre, the book review requires two distinct actions: a summary of content and an evaluation recommending or not recommending the book. Yet, in its structure and style, Aramis works to prevent this kind of structured reading. As one of its characters admits, the book itself is a "rickety endeavor," a "white elephant," a book that tries to innovate in every respect at once (298). As a radical prose experiment, Aramis is particularly difficult to assess because, as Latour suggests, it attempts a new genre for a new audience: The genre is "scientifiction"; the audience includes humanists, technologists, and social researchers. Through this new genre, Latour wants to convince humanists that machines are as worthy of interpretation as novels. He wants to persuade technicians that they must become good humanists and sociologists to become better engineers. And, finally, he wants to persuade social researchers that sociology is not the science of human beings alone-that sociology can "welcome crowds of nonhumans with open arms" (viii).
So what is a scientifiction, and how do I review it? The only way that I have found to fulfill the implied contract of the book review genre and yet do partial...