Not long ago, a case crossed my courtroom Bench that left a lasting impression on me. A woman had formed a trusting connection with a man and feeling secure, agreed to share an intimate moment during a video call. Unclothed, she believed she was as safe as if she were alone in her own room. But that trust was shattered. The man secretly recorded her without consent and shared the video with others.
It forced me to ask a profound question: how did she come to believe that standing naked before a camera was as private and safe as standing unclothed before someone in a closed room?
The answer is not simply about trust or caution — it lies deep within the architecture of the human brain, a brain shaped over millennia for a very different world than the one we inhabit today.
For countless thousands of years, human beings lived in tightly knit tribes of small numbers, typically around 150 people, where everyone knew each other’s faces, names, and stories. Our brains evolved in these intimate social settings, learning to assess trust through physical presence, body language, and the protective boundaries of walls and doors. Acts of vulnerability, like intimacy, were conducted where the consequences were tangible and visible. Trust and privacy were rooted in real, physical proximity, the shared space of a room or a campfire, where betrayal was costly and unlikely.
But in today’s digital age, those rules have been fractured. Intimacy can now unfold on screens, mediated by devices that create a deceptive sense of privacy. What feels to the user like a private room is, in truth, a vast and open space, a digital arena accessible instantly to thousands or even millions of people around the globe. The human brain, still wired for a world of face-to-face tribes and physical presence, struggles to grasp this new reality. Our ingrained instincts whisper safety while the world around us moves at a speed and scale unimaginable to our ancestors. This discrepancy exposes a hard truth for society, judges, and lawmakers: the protections and laws conceived to safeguard trust and privacy were crafted for a physical world. Those laws must now evolve to shield individuals in a digital landscape where harm is diffuse, instantaneous, and often invisible. What once was betrayal between known members of a community can now explode across networks with a simple click, wreaking damage that evolutionary psychology was not designed to anticipate.
The woman in that courtroom did what was natural, to trust based on instinct shaped by millions of years of evolution. The failure was not in her awareness or intellect. It was in the mismatch between prehistoric wiring and modern technology. Our brains have been sculpted for survival via trust in small groups, for interpreting the subtle cues of body language and eye contact, for knowing that betrayal carries real consequences in a shared, visible world. But we did not evolve for the vast anonymity of cities, let alone an online network where unknown strangers may see us without consent or recourse.
Trust, in the tribal context, was a cornerstone of survival — it was a binding contract that ensured cooperation in hunting, child-rearing, and protection. Betrayal was an existential threat, and social mechanisms evolved to punish those who broke that trust. Today, trust can be violated with ease, and harm multiplies invisibly, perpetuated by anonymous technology. The digital realm transforms acts of intimacy into evidence, gossip, and currency traded behind screens, while our minds lean toward openness and vulnerability. This is a fundamental source of human fragility in the digital era.
Yet, in this challenge lies the resilience of human nature. Our history is a testament to adaptability — through ice ages, famines, wars, and extinction threats, humanity has prevailed not through brute force alone but through cooperation. We survived because we learned to bind together with trust and collective effort. The very instincts that once secured our survival also make us vulnerable now; but they also give us the power to change the conditions that threaten us.
The solution is not to abandon our tribal brains but to reinterpret and reinforce them with new frameworks fit for this age. We once created laws to curb violence that threatened our ancestors; now, we must build ethical, legal, and technical protections to safeguard digital intimacy. If the sacredness of intimacy deserved protection in a cave, around a fire, or behind the walls of a home, it deserves no less in the realm of cyberspace.
In that courtroom, I did not just witness a case of exploitation, I saw a collision of timescales. On one side flows the slow current of human evolution that forged our brains, instincts, and social norms. On the other surges the fast flood of disruptive technology, a force that moves faster than our consciousness and regulation can comprehend. Until we reconcile these opposing timelines, we will remain as cave people wielding smartphones, hearts tuned to trust, yet exposed behind infinite glass walls.
New thinking
The path forward demands new thinking. Judges and lawmakers must recognise digital injuries as real harms, no less important than physical violations. Society must develop rules that govern digital behaviour, not just with punitive laws but also with technological safeguards and cultural norms that reinforce dignity and privacy. Education must evolve to teach digital literacy that matches emotional instincts with rational caution about the digital world’s risks.
This challenge springs from the fundamental mismatch of two speeds — the slow evolution of the brain and the rapid exponential growth of technology. Until bridged, this gap will leave many vulnerable. But humans have never been passive observers to such transitions. Throughout history, it is our capacity to cooperate, empathise, and innovate that has preserved us.
The choice is stark. We can allow digital technologies to erode trust, scatter intimacy, and leave people vulnerable to endless exploitation. Or we can harness our ancient gift for cooperation to create a safer digital humanity. If we succeed, the digital world may yet become a place where the privacy and dignity once guarded in caves are honoured anew. Our instinct to trust may remain, not as a liability, but as a foundation for a connected, compassionate society on this frontier.
Human cooperation carried us through famines and wars, now it must work again to protect the sacredness of intimacy, no matter the place or the medium. From the firesides of the past to the digital glow of today, trust remains at the core of what it means to be human. The caves around us may be gone, but the need for trust and privacy remains as vital as ever. It is up to us to build that trust, even in the boundless expanse of cyberspace.
The question we must now ask ourselves is this: Will we rise to protect our digital selves with the same reverence as our ancestors protected their caves, or will we allow our most ancient instincts to be exploited and erased in the vast wilderness of the internet?
Published – September 07, 2025 05:11 am IST