Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet

Description

An interdisciplinary collection of essays on telepistemology--the study of knowledge acquired at a distance. The Robot in the Garden initiates a critical theory of telerobotics and introduces telepistemology, the study of knowledge acquired at a distance. Many of our most influential technologies, the telescope, telephone, and television, were developed to provide knowledge at a distance. Telerobots, remotely controlled robots, facilitate action at a distance. Specialists use telerobots to explore actively environments such as Mars, the Titanic, and Chernobyl. Military personnel increasingly employ reconnaissance drones and telerobotic missiles. At home, we have remote controls for the garage door, car alarm, and television (the latter a remote for the remote). The Internet dramatically extends our scope and reach. Thousands of cameras and robots are now accessible online. Although the role of technical mediation has been of interest to philosophers since the seventeenth century, the Internet forces a reconsideration. As the public gains access to telerobotic instruments previously restricted to scientists and soldiers, questions of mediation, knowledge, and trust take on new significance for everyday life. Telerobotics is a mode of representation. But representations can misrepresent. If Orson Welles's War of the Worlds was the defining moment for radio, what will be the defining moment for the Internet? As artists have always been concerned with how representations provide us with knowledge, the book also looks at telerobotics' potential as an artistic medium. The seventeen essays, by leading figures in philosophy, art, history, and engineering, are organized into three sections: Philosophy; Art, History, and Critical Theory; and Engineering, Interface, and System Design. Contributors: Albert Borgmann, Tom Campanella, John Canny, Judith Donath, Hubert Dreyfus, Ken Goldberg, Alvin Goldman, Oliver Grau, Marina Grzinic, Blake Hannaford, Michael Idinopulos, Martin Jay, Eduardo Kac, Machiko Kusahara, Jeff Malpas, Lev Manovich, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Eric Paulos, Catherine Wilson Acknowledgments Contributors 1. Introduction: The Unique Phenomenon of a Distance - Ken Goldberg 2. Eden by Wire: Webcameras and the Telepresent Landscape 3. Telepistemology: Descartes’s Last Stand 4. Vicariousness and Authenticity 5. Information, Nearness, and Farness 6. Acting at a Distance and Knowing from Afar: Agency and Knowledge on the Internet 7. Telerobotic Knowledge: A Reliabilist Approach 8. The Speed of Light and the Virtualization of Reality 9. To Lie and to Act: Potemkin’s Villages,Cinema, and Telepresence 10. Dialogical Telepresence Art and Net Ecology 11. Presence, Absence, and Knowledge in Telerobotic Art 12. Exposure Time, the Aura,and Telerobotics 13. History of Telepresence: Automata,Illusion, and Rejecting the Body 14. Feeling Is Believing: History of Telerobotics Technology 15. Tele-Embodiment and Shattered Presence: Reconstructing the Body for Online Interaction 16. Being Real: Questions of Tele-Identity 17. Telepistemology, Mediation, and the Design of Transparent Interfaces 18. The Film and the New Psychology Index