Cyber Ikigai 2

A few things stand out clearly. First, this is big. Online shopping is fast replacing physical purchase. Shopkeepers in Kohima, a small city in India’s Northeast reported 80% of the payment is now happening over UPI. Purchase of tickets, be it for a flight or for train now, happens almost exclusively online. Online games are replacing traditional physical games at a fast pace. Smart watches are fast giving way to traditional watches. Video Conferences may end an era of physical meetings soon. Banks report a sharp decline in customers coming to the bank to effect money transfer. A letter from a friend or a relative living far away has become a thing of the past. Most of our youngsters use Telegram, but have not seen a real telegram.

From school education to shopping to office email to meditation to charity and renunciation, cyberspace pervades all the four ashramas of life. Time spent on screen will only increase in the coming years.

Second, this is here to stay. Latest data show people are spending half of their awake time on screen. Even in those countries that show less screen consumption, the daily average is close to six hours, or one third of their wake time. The spread is across social groups and the variations are mostly insignificant.

Thirdly, there is hardly any inter governmental body in place to regulate its affairs, even as cyberspace has become the place we live for significant durations of our lives. There is no social contract worth the name in this global State. In other words, even as cyberspace has become the biggest social space on Earth ever, its norms are far from clear.

This is not to say there are no laws made to regulate the affairs, nor any effort made at all. But in the absence of a fundamental architecture of regulation at the global level, these efforts at the national level struggle to yield results. Take the case of licensing the websites. This is now done by ICAAN, a private entity. Basic requirements of being a [Shajahan asks to insert some implications here] public good, such as rating the websites as A or UA or U have not been undertaken.

Fourthly, there are some big winners as of now though it is too early to say whether the digital era is a blessing or a curse for the humankind in general. Corporates who invested in cyberspace have made it big. In fact, seeing the wealth of the tech giants, we realise that in no time in human history has any corporate had grown this big. And it is growing to such a degree that there is a real possibility that they can be richer than any country on earth soon.

Another set of people who have made it big are the criminals. Economist reported in a cover story published in January 2025 that the cyber scam industry has grown to such proportions that no crime syndicate had grown at any time in history. In many countries, the income generated from cybercrimes has reportedly exceeded their GDP!

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