Tele-operators experience a reversible shift of viewpoint without being deceived about their location.

Evidence

You could say, very schematically, that there are at least four aspects to presence that a body combines in a single place, in the absence of other equipment: the body acts, and if one wishes to act, one does it through the body and right here; this body is perceiving and, here again, in the absence of further equipment, it is here where the body is, with all its means, that one perceives; the body is also perceptible (visible, carrying smells … ); and, finally, this body is vulnerable, can be wounded, killed—and that is because it is alive. The body is active, perceiving, perceptible and vital and all those aspects are fixed in one and the same place, which is itself what we call the body. “The body” is the name of this immediate and seemingly indissoluble synthesis of those four dimensions or aspects of experience, which call out to one another and which, quite literally, march together. It is this immediate unity that tele-technologies radically undo, appending to the immediate synthesis another one, a technical synthesis that radically reconstructs the relations between those four aspects. They used to be linked, but now some have become independent, dissociated. The body has become dismantled and, in a partial reproduction of an organic body, it is possible to dissociate elements that the body, in its immediate unity, used to associate. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 953 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: A tele-operator’s two presences are layered, so neither fully effaces the other.; Tele-technologies dismantle the body’s unified synthesis of action, perception, perceptibility, and vulnerability — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 953; Drone operators live with two stacked presences rather than mistaking one for the other. (+2 more)

Broader Connections