ABSTRACT
We elaborate on what we consider the intrinsic tragedy of the virtual by describing the losses that are incurred in digital life from three distinct vantage points: the relational, the communal and the ontological. Relationally our constant preoccupation with our devices disconnects us from the people around us. We consider our use of the power of the digital capture to deal with loss and the passing away of things in experience, and explore the impact this has on how we mourn. Communally, the digital bursts into our shared, collective spaces, hampering our capacity to effectively read and empathize with one another. We explore therefore the phenomenon of mass violence as that which leaks out into the world from the virtual platform. And ontologically, we claim that the spontaneity possible in the digital algorithm is always less substantial than the vitality of our dreaming life, thus diminishing the existential richness of human experience. Our embrace of digital virtuality paradoxically blocks our access to the human virtual. In concluding the book, we give the tragic nature of virtuality its proper weight and dimension, and refine how we understand it, embracing the pharmacological complexity at the heart of the ontological centaur.
