Ghosting by Dominic Pettman

Abandonment is as old as time, but ghosting is a modern twist on this ancient experience. Ghosting is not only an unpleasant experience, or cowardly act, but a symptom of our increasingly spectral - that is, mediated and virtual - relationship to the world. The overabundance of new modes of communication has invited an almost infinite number of contacts and conversations. At the same time, it has also offered an unprecedented opportunity for ignoring messages from others. And just as we invented the car crash when we invented automobiles, we also encouraged ghosting when we created the internet. This book traces the source of this vexed experience to, and through, our current media ecology, technological networks, political landscape, collective psychology, and deep sense of social neglect.