One of my top 10 or 20 books is Aramis, or the Love of Technology; this review is just excellent!

… Rather, he believes, Aramis is to be thought of as a living being, whose interactions with its environment determine its viability.

This belief is a recurring theme throughout the book. The intern engineer is not quick to accept Norbert’s insistence that a technological project be understood as a living thing. It isn’t that he disputes the claim but rather that he finds it a difficult principle to keep in his grasp. …

…all explanations drawn after the fact now that we know Aramis died, with the wisdom but also the freedom of hindsight. In hindsight, many explanations gain plausibility simply because they support a conclusion that we know to be true, that Aramis died. …

As he says:

Aramis had not incorporated any of the transformations of its environment. It had remained purely an object, a pure object. Remote from the social arena, remote from history; intact….

…If the Scrabble player holds onto her letters, hoping to make her dream word, her opponent will rack up points while she is waiting and waiting for the perfect opportunity to deploy her masterpiece. The successful player negotiates and deploys her pieces in a long-term, evolving strategy in partnership with what is happening on the board…