The robot in the garden : telerobotics and telepistemology in the age of the Internet / edited by Ken Goldberg.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: The Unique Phenomenon of a Distance / Ken Goldberg -- Eden by Wire: Webcameras and the Telepresent Landscape / Thomas J. Campanella -- Philosophy -- Telepistemology: Descartes's Last Stand / Hubert Dreyfus -- Vicariousness and Authenticity / Catherine Wilson -- Information, Nearness, and Farness / Albert Borgmann -- Acting at a Distance and Knowing from Afar: Agency and Knowledge on the Internet / Jeff Malpas -- Telerobotic Knowledge: A Reliabilist Approach / Alvin Goldman -- Art, History, and Critical Theory -- The Speed of Light and the Virtualization of Reality / Martin Jay -- To Lie and to Act: Potemkin's Villages, Cinema, and Telepresence / Lev Manovich -- Dialogical Telepresence and Net Ecology / Eduardo Kac -- Presence, Absence, and Knowledge in Telerobotic Art / Machiko Kusahara -- Exposure Time, the Aura, and Telerobotics / Marina Grzinic -- The History of Telepresence: Automata, Illusion, and the Rejection of the Body / Oliver Grau -- Engineering, Interface, and System Design -- Feeling Is Believing: A History of Telerobotics / Blake Hannaford -- Tele-Embodiment and Shattered Presence: Reconstructing the Body for Online Interaction / John Canny, Eric Paulos -- Being Real: Questions of Tele-Identity / Judith Donath -- Telepistemology, Mediation, and the Design of Transparent Interfaces / Michael Idinopulos -- The Film and the New Psychology (1945) / Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Print version record.

"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"--Provider website.

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