From Homo Sapiens to Phono Sapiens: Smartphones as Intimate Strangers in the Age of Posthumanism = From Homo Sapiens to Phono Sapiens: Smartphones as Intimate Strangers in the Age of Posthumanism

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Released in 2018, Intimate Strangers is a Korean remake of the Italian original, Perfect Strangers (2016), about smartphone dictated lives as the central plot. With the invention of new words such as digital zombies, smartphone addictions, nomophobia, and phubbing, we have evolved from “homo sapiens” to smartphone using “phono sapiens”. Even the director of Intimate Strangers admitted his smartphone as his best friend. The movie’s notable tagline: “We all have three lives: public life, private life and secret life” promotes a lot of questions, and this paper will attempt to understand how deeply smartphones have penetrated into our everyday lives: be it public, private or secret. As one of the character claims, “Nobody is perfect in this world, and we can easily get hurt. This smartphone has too much information and to play a game with such a perfect device is not a good idea. We could find out that we know less than we thought. Also, we don’t necessarily need to know so much about each other.” The movie’s unexpected twist in the end opens up even more questions on truth and trust as we approach smartphone dictated posthuman society.