The boundaries of loneliness are difficult to define. With the exception of purely physical loneliness, when an individual is clearly isolated from those around them, this state is not always so clear-cut in social and psychological terms. We are all familiar with those moments when a person feels lonely in a crowd or chooses to withdraw into solitude of their own accord. In this text, I examine loneliness as a dual state – one of the contemporary paradoxes of digitalisation, where an individual is simultaneously physically alone yet virtually connected to others. The main hypothesis and question here is to what extent we are actually connected within the network, or whether it rather disconnects us, and whether this is in fact an outlet and an indicator of the deep alienation in contemporary society, which is not even willing to admit its own loneliness. (From the author’s preface).