There are two recent developments that prompted me to write this book. The first one goes like this: on a Sunday morning a few months ago, my good friend called me in panic. He has just completed his post graduation in psychiatry. He informed me earnestly: “I have just got bail”. Bail from a digital arrest. He was under arrest and ‘kept in custody’-in front of a camera for long three days. He has paid Rs. 50,000/- and secured bail. Why he called me was to ensure the people who spoke to him were real. I told him they must be conmen, and they have duped him. He took some time to realise that it was a well choreographed, high end, drama. A trained psychiatrist falling prey for digital hypnotism surprised me no end. After this incident, there were many more similar cases that were brought to my attention by friends or relatives. Their responses varied. A few of them had disconnected the call when the fraudsters asked them to switch over to a video call. Some paid money but immediately reported to authorities and got the accounts of the fraudster frozen through an innovative mechanism authorities in India have put in place. Some are still struggling to retrieve the amount lost. But there is a common thread running through these stories: The educated, or even the highly educated, did not display any special skills in warding off the fraudsters. But a few of the not-so-well educated quickly identified the fraud and escaped the net. Now, the second one. When India introduced the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) on a massive scale, I was sceptical. Assuming there can be glitches at the level of devices or networks, especially the data connectivity. I was also concerned about the possibility of accidents or attacks on the cloud resources or the software backbone that supports its integration. But nothing happened. This proved sceptic inside me wrong. In a matter of three years, UPI turned out to be a roaring success. The device, the network, the cloud, the entire integration performed exceedingly well, and India set an example to the world. Yet, surprisingly the users, the human interface proved to be the most ill-equipped part of the entire edifice. The preferred attack surface of the fraudsters quickly became the user’s emotional and cognitive vulnerabilities. Whereas creating the ring of safety around the cloud, network and devices proved successful, the users kept committing mistakes. The lessons are worth summarising: Human beings are probably the weakest link in the man- machine-network-cloud continuum that makes up the cyberspace: Being educated is no guarantee that one’s cyber-life is secure. And that the real challenge is perhaps not some sort of technical cyber security, but rewiring the attitudes habits and norms that dictate the behaviour of the human being in the cyberspace.
 Hence, if cyberspace has to be a safe space, two projects need to be undertaken. The first project, of cybersecurity, is protecting the machines and the material matrix that host the cyberspace, and this has been underway for some time now and is slowly succeeding. The second, which has barely started, is the project of configuring the human brain, human bodies, human relations and the human will, for living a good cyber-life. The species homo sapiens will have to adapt to the new world to which they are now hooked to. They have to educate themselves anew with new knowledge, new skills, and perhaps with new attitudes. In short, a whole new cyber sensorium has to develop in the human beings. What this entails is a bit of rewiring of human beings as well as their cognitive, emotional, normative, social and political existence. *** 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 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! *** Where do we go from here? Let us see what has been our understanding so far. The existing works in the field fall into two categories. Cybersecurity and Digital Minimalism. The Cybersecurity approach emphasises ways and means to protect the devices, the networks and the cloud assets from fraudsters and secure a safe cyber experience. The Digital Minimalism approach category emphasises the need to detach ourselves from the cyberspace as much as possible so that the ill effects of screen do not spoil our lives. I would argue that the cybersecurity approach has a major limitation. But before that we must appreciate the immense worth of this approach. There can be no mistaking the craving for cybersecurity as it is of foundational importance. Abraham Maslow and his admirers keep reminding us that the safety needs are the second basic human need, after the physiological needs. However, if we emphasise safety and security too much, we get stuck there. Security is a basic stage, but there are more stages. The current stage of human cyber evolution invites us to think beyond the basic need of security, even as we ensure we meet the basic needs first. Digital minimalism is important and laudable and has saved many lives from the snares of the screen. However, there is a potential flaw here. Digital minimalism increasingly looks like an impossible task as cyberspace is creeping in even as we try to minimise the unnecessary entrapments of the cyberspace. It is quickly taking over the functions of the physical space for the good. We may have reached a stage where we have to learn to live in this space with grace rather than attempting to dodge it. What we need is perhaps a paradigm beyond these two approaches. It is in this context that I thought of writing a book where one acknowledges and incorporates both the streams, but attempt to take the discussion beyond these. Life is one integral whole. Whether you spend your time in the physical world or the cyberspace, it is our life that is being lived. The proposition of the book is this: we need is a good life, eudaimonia or ikigai, in the cyberspace. And it warrants a new paradigm that incorporates cybersecurity but attempts to effect corresponding changes in the attitudes and norms of the human behaviour. The idea of a good life has a long and rich history. From eudaimonia proposed by Aristotle to Ikigai, the Japanese Way of Good Living. It is high time we juxtaposed the requirements of living a good life with the realities of cyberspace so that the eudaimonia proposed by Aristotle survives well into the era of cyberspace. The emphasis is good living across all the realms of human life, whether it is at the level of the basic needs or self actualisation, be it the life of a student or that of a nun. Let me hasten to add that this is thinking aloud rather than pontificating. I do not claim to know everything about cybersecurity or to be a practicing guru of digital minimalism and cyber eudaimonia. But I did come across several cases of cyber frauds up close, saw how hard-earned money and dignity vanish into thin air in no time because of an error of judgement in a split second. I did try hard to practise digital minimalism and do feel strongly about having a framework towards eudaimonia in the cyberspace, or what I call the Cyber Ikigai. I would deem my job complete if at least a few of my readers take one small step in that direction. There are experts, from the scientific fields, who know the inside out of the technical aspect of the cyberspace. And then there are people who are good, from the social sciences, at what is happening to human interactions in cyberspace. We need experts who know both sides of the story. This is a humble attempt to promote such a genre. In fact, it is the administrators and political leaders who have a big role in shaping the future of cyberspace and its consequences. And unless there are experts who can effectively communicate with the policymakers including legislatures, judiciary, executive and press, change will not happen. It is the role of the experts to prepare summaries for them. The book is a humble effort in that direction too. But the most important reader this author has in mind is the educated common man. A small note on methodology. This essentially part a review of literature, and part an observational study. As we are dealing with a significant shift in the very way human beings exist, we cannot analyse this within the confines of any single discipline. The conceptual birth of the idea of cybernetics is worth a mention in this context. It was a bold attempt by mathematician Norbert Weiner, of borrowing lavishly from engineering, biology, and psychology, that created the idea of the cyberspace. As one dug deep, it was a surprise to this author that the contributions of experts from domains other than technology have been significant in the very birth of the cyberspace, the foundational contributions of psychologist Joseph Licklidier of Massachusetts Institute of Technology being an example. If a discipline such as psychology could play such a foundational role in originating the cyberspace, why shy away from utilising the same interdisciplinary approach while attempting find solutions for the maladies created by the cyberspace. Hence one has tried to broad base his sources to include thinkers from Sociology, especially the Spanish academic Manuel Castells who worked on Sociology of cyberspace, Hannah Arendt (her insights on the Banality of Evil, articulated in her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1963 throws light on the travails of the twenty-first century life like no other), the resourceful journalist Edward Lucas ( his Cyberphobia, 2017 remains a pioneering work in assessing the problems caused by cyberspace), to mention a few. As for reasoning, one has made use of deductive thinking to take things to their essential First Principles (by trying to bring cyberspace to its irreducible, commonsensical basics,) as well as inductive theory building, making meat from existing social theories, be it eudaimonia of Aristotle or Communicative Rationality of Jürgen Habermas. One of the consequences of these efforts is the oft repeated visualisation of cyberspace as a space that intervenes. Another is emphasising the rather subconscious propensity of the users of the cyberspace to auto- amputate their senses as well as themselves from the larger organism of society. (Excerpts from the upcoming book Cyber Ikigai)