In this important new study, Imar de Vries take a historical and comparative approach in researching our intimate relationship with present-day mobile wireless technologies. By analyzing the full range of human expectations and behavior in regard to mobile devices, de Vries looks at how wireless gadgets have changed our ideas about communication, while at the same time he demonstrates how modern technology surprisingly repeats the patterns of older media. Applying a far-reaching and archaeological perspective to communication media, Tantalisingly Close looks at human desire to connect and the way that it has both shaped and been shaped by technology, past and present.