1. Photo and video evidence was a game-changer for establishing facts and chronologies. As we've seen, it's becoming harder and harder to distinguish fake photos and videos from real. It's not a stretch to predict a time when we'll only be able to make probabilistic statements about the veracity of photos or videos. (E.g., "60% liklihood of being undoctored.") This is probably already true about photos, although the expense of making a perfect fake is still pretty high, in terms of expertise.
I'd argue the "natural state" is one where word-of-mouth and first-hand accounts are the most authoritative evidence we can have (other than physical evidence like DNA left behind). And even physical evidence left behind can't tell us what the person did while there or how an event transpired.
2. Tracking communications. In the digital age, we've some people have come to assume that all digital text is untrackable and anonymous. Your "11001110" is the same as mine. Historically, it was pretty difficult to transcribe information without leaving traces of the origin of that info. These zero-width characters plus all the other text fingerprinting methods, and ubiquitous tracking in communication logs make it nearly impossible, again, to communicate with others without leaving a trail. And then there's the writing style analysis which makes it tough to write anything without leaving telltale fingerprints.
So, I'm proposing that we are returning to the "natural state" of things. Probably overstating things a bit, but still an interesting thought to consider.