Intimacy and technology: Smartphone as a best friend?

This paper focuses on intimacy and technology in the context of the modern society. A relationship of these two aspects of society is introduced as mutually influencing, since intimacy structures technology and on the other hand technology has wider impact on intimacy. Because technology is narrowly connected with commerce, it allows commerce to access the intimate and highly personal relationships. Discussing relevant authors, a picture of contemporary relationships is drawn, being presented as contradictory and full of paradoxes, and consequently more difficult to deal with. Tendencies towards relationships, which are sustained by technology, are presented as ideal and in the text are posted as an opposite to the real ones. An analysis of intimacy dimensions demonstrates that the contradictions continue to exist in the modern relationships even though they are experienced through technology. Further on discussions are interconnected in the example of smartphone, which commerce presents as the best friend of the human. In the end the role of commerce is highlighted, since it introduces the relationships being sustained by technology as the natural ones, and by this activity an effort is made to gain better control in intimate relationships. Keywords intimacy, technology, commerce, smartphone,..