So telekinesis as it is doesn't seem to have much use in the game beyond bringing stuff to you from far away because you're too lazy to go grab it.

Would there be a way for someone to mod Telekinesis to be able to manipulate objects from far away? For example, turning levers, pulling chains, opening doors and chests, etc. If Telekinesis could do that, I think it'd be a lot more useful.

I am not sure that this is useless (though I have not found the book yet, so I cannot say for sure), but -- especially combined with the illusion perk -- this can let you steal things without being detected. Though, I agree that this is a somewhat specialized use. Still.. activating items using the spell would be interesting.

I was hoping you could use it to throw objects around whilst sneaking to alert enemies guarding areas so you could slip past, scenarios like that.

You can easily steal anything without any spell. You can carry around any item by holding E and noone will complain. Just drop it into some dark corner and steal it there. This system is not very well thought out, just like countless other implementations details in this game. Be it stealing, crafting, sneaking or whatever. Everything seems like they had lots of great ideas but not the time to do it right in the end.
So yes, telekinesis is pretty much useless at the moment.

I find the spell for the most part useless too.
I haven't found the button combo, if one exist to move items further away.
I'd very much so like to be able to move the item in 3 dimensions.

Releasing the spell causes the item to be thrown, which can be useful, but in reality, not so much.
Using it as a distraction, i found grabbing an item but releasing it soon after works best. As opposed to throwing it.

Really just the ability to move it in 3D including rotating an object would be preferable. For those that have ever played Garry's Mod, Think "Physgun".
Make it easier to use buckets.

Or to place a larger item above someone and drop it on them.
So long as if they see an item moving infront of them, they are aware of it.

This does not work very well when the guards are already hostile, for example.

You can throw things with this spell, but besides a possible distraction, this doesn't do anything as you can only pick up and throw inventory items, which are all rather small.

If it could also pick up and throw large things, such as those boulders that sometimes fall down from traps, that would be more interesting. I think we should be able to activate objects. Like say you want to surprise enemies in the next room. If you could stay back and open the door from far away so they don't see you right away, that'd be cool.

In Morrowind I mostly used telekinesis to open trapped chests or doors so I didn't get hurt.

Yeah sick of using bow for this purpose. It's annoying if you're not doing archery would be nice to have another option

Trouble is unless you're also an illusion expert and have silent casting, telekinesis generates so much noise the enemy will find you instead of being distracted by your thrown projectile.

In oblivion someone made a telekinesis mod by firing a second, invisible projectile along with the normal spell, that projectile then acted as an anchor for triggering another script that could manipulate levers/chests/lockpicking, and if used on a living character, you could press another key to either attempt to "pull" or "push" the foe (Depending on a number of factors, this'd either fail completely, stagger the foe, or pull them on their feet towards or away from you.)

Or you could attempt to bash a living target with a held projectile which'd do damage based on mass/force

In another thread (which I searched for but couldn't find, sorry), somebody said they could notch an arrow, then pick up a gem from their inventory, then drop it right as they released the arrow to shoot the gem out in front of them. The person said they shot a gem in the midst of several bandits which caused them to immediately start fighting each other over the gem. Wonder if you could use Telekinesis to do that more easily?

There is one useful use for Telekinesis that I know of, which is to knock soul gems off mean spell traps. Not that you can't do that in other ways.