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

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Goldberg, Ken.

Series:

Leonardo (Series) (Cambridge, Mass.)

Leonardo

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Robotics.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 366 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"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.

Contents:

Introduction : The unique phenomenon of a distance / Ken Goldberg

Eden by wire : webcameras and the telepresent landscape / Thomas J. Campanella

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

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 Gržinić

The history of telepresence : automata, illusion, and the rejection of the body / Oliver Grau

Feeling is believing : a history of telerobotics / Blake Hannaford

Tele-embodiment and shattered presence : reconstructing the body for online interaction / John Canny and 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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

0-262-27402-7

0-585-30958-2

OCLC:

45734010