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Some lessons for plants from the advent of the milking robot: queering the farm with ecofeminist robotics. Or, how to be a farmer when agriculture is a massive multiplayer online game
Ongoing developments in robotics and plant sciences put pressure on traditional dichotomies like biology/technology, natural/artificial, living/non-living, autonomic/automatic. The blurring of these categories generates new ontological and ethical questions. Are plants and robots two categorically different phenomena? How are we to think of new possibilities like robotic ecosystems, robot plants, and the networking of non-human intelligences? And how are we to choose, act, and live virtuously when confronting such novelties? In this workshop, we explore relational accounts as promising ways to cross established borders, re-elaborate distinctions and possibly build new philosophical bridges. We do so by discussing new ways of looking at, thinking about, and engaging and dealing with plants and robots from different perspectives in philosophy, robotics, and art.