Most people assume revolutions begin in the wealthiest places—Silicon Valley labs, Nordic innovation hubs, the glass towers of Shenzhen. We imagine progress flowing outward from centers of power, like ripples from a stone dropped in still water.
Logical. Orderly. Predictable.
But history tells a different story.
History is full of surprises that make experts look foolish and predictions look quaint. The breakthroughs might be invented in rich nations, but the transformation—the real meaning of those breakthroughs—often comes from places no one was watching.
From the margins. From the forgotten corners. From people who were never supposed to matter.
And right now, as America scrambles to lock down AI’s intellectual property, patent every algorithm, and control every training dataset, we’re setting up the same pattern we’ve seen play out a hundred times before:
We’ll own the patents.
Someone else will own the future.
The 5G Story Almost No One Tells
When 5G launched, the headlines were predictable. New York, Seoul, Tokyo, London. Analysts obsessed over patents and spectrum auctions. Tech companies fought bitter battles over standards, licensing fees, and control of the infrastructure.
The story was all about power—who had it, who would keep it, who would profit most.
But the most profound impact of 5G didn’t unfold in those cities.
It bloomed in places that had almost nothing to begin with. Places that weren’t even part of the conversation.
Across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, 5G didn’t have to compete with what came before. There were no legacy copper lines to maintain, no entrenched telecom monopolies to protect, no decades of sunk investment to defend, no regulatory capture to navigate.
Entire communities leapfrogged decades of development overnight.
A farmer in rural Kenya got real-time weather data and market prices, transforming subsistence into commerce.
A student in Bangladesh accessed university lectures that would have been impossible to reach just months before.
A health worker in Peru connected remote villages to specialists in Lima, saving lives that would have been lost to distance and infrastructure poverty.
Banking became mobile. Healthcare became remote. Education became accessible. Government services became human again—responsive, transparent, direct.
And because these societies weren’t constrained by the past, weren’t defending what they’d built yesterday, they often innovated faster and more radically than the nations that invented the technology.
The companies that owned the 5G patents made billions.
But the societies that found new meaning in the technology—that used it to meet human needs rather than maximize shareholder returns—were the ones that changed the world.
That’s the pattern we’re about to repeat with AI.
Only this time, the scale is much larger. The stakes are much higher. And the gap between patent owners and transformation leaders could become permanent.
The Next Leap Won’t Come from Where We Expect
We talk about AI as though it belongs to the West—as though OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are the permanent architects of the future. As though San Francisco and Seattle will always be the centers of gravity.
But the world has a habit of surprising its self-appointed centers.
Tomorrow’s most powerful AI innovations may not come from Palo Alto or Cambridge. They may come from Lagos, Karachi, Bogotá, or Jakarta, —from places where there’s no legacy system to protect, no institutional ego invested in “how it’s always been done,” no career risk in trying something radically different.
AI’s greatest impact won’t unfold in the data centers of Northern Virginia or the venture capital offices of Sand Hill Road.
It will erupt where education is uneven, infrastructure fragile, bureaucracy weak—and yet imagination abundant.
Because when people who have never had a voice suddenly find a way to express their ideas powerfully and globally, when barriers to entry collapse and the price of amplification drops to near zero, the world doesn’t just change.
It explodes.
It won’t be the data centers that change everything.
It’ll be the humans we weren’t looking at.
The ones who couldn’t afford the right schools, couldn’t access the right networks, couldn’t speak the language of power fluently enough to be taken seriously.
Until now.
The Paradox of Innovation: Necessity and Space
Real innovation—the kind that reshapes societies rather than just iterating products—happens when two seemingly opposite forces collide:
Necessity and space.
Necessity: The Engine of Transformation
Necessity drives invention in places where old systems don’t work—or never existed at all.
A teenager in Nairobi builds mobile payment systems because there are no banks within fifty miles and cash is dangerous to carry.
A teacher in Mumbai creates informal peer-learning networks because schools are overcrowded, understaffed, and inaccessible to most of her students.
A carpenter in São Paulo organizes his entire neighborhood through WhatsApp because government infrastructure is unreliable and official channels take months to respond to simple requests.
These aren’t incremental improvements to existing systems.
These aren’t “disruptions” in the Silicon Valley sense—making something 10% better or 20% cheaper.
These are transformations born from constraint. Solutions that emerge when the old ways simply cannot work and something new must be imagined from nothing.
When you give those innovators access to AI—to tools that let them think at scale, build without code, translate without intermediaries, and reach global audiences without gatekeepers—the results can be explosive.
Not explosive in the venture capital sense of “billion-dollar valuation.”
Explosive in the human sense of “millions of lives fundamentally changed.”
Space: The Ground of Wisdom
Then there’s the second force, often overlooked: space to think.
Countries with strong social infrastructure—Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, parts of Germany and the Netherlands—have this in abundance.
When people work 25–35 hours a week instead of 50–60, when healthcare and childcare aren’t constant sources of anxiety and financial strain, when families have protected time together without sacrificing economic security, when education doesn’t require crushing debt—people have the mental bandwidth to ask better questions.
Not “How do we move faster?” but “Where are we actually going?”
Not “How do we compete?” but “What are we competing for?”
Not “How do we maximize efficiency?” but “What do we want this technology to be for?”
Space creates the conditions for wisdom. For long-term thinking. For ethical reflection. For asking whether something that can be done should be done.
Necessity creates urgency.
Space creates wisdom.
Both are needed for true progress.
The societies that will thrive in the AI era won’t be the ones with just one or the other. They’ll be the ones that cultivate both—the desperation to solve real problems and the spaciousness to solve them thoughtfully.
The American Blind Spot
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
America now has neither.
We’re too invested in old systems to be desperate, and too exhausted to be thoughtful.
We’re not building from scratch in Lagos, where necessity forces innovation.
We’re not taking long lunches in Oslo, where space allows reflection.
We’re running a 20th-century economy at 21st-century speed—trying to innovate with no time left to think, trying to compete while our best minds are burning out, trying to lead while running on fumes.
Our workers are exhausted. Our families are stretched thin. Our creativity is throttled by overwork and the constant anxiety of economic precarity.
The brightest minds at our best companies spend their days in back-to-back meetings, their evenings catching up on emails, their weekends recovering just enough to do it again.
There’s no space for the kind of deep thinking that produces breakthroughs. No room for the wandering conversations that lead to unexpected insights. No time for the rest that makes creativity possible.
We’re in danger of owning the algorithms but losing the society.
We’ll have the patents. We’ll collect the licensing fees. We’ll dominate the rankings of AI publications and startup valuations.
And we’ll wonder why the most transformative applications are happening elsewhere.
Why the most human uses of the technology—the ones that actually improve lives rather than just optimize processes—are being pioneered in places we dismissed as “behind.”
AI’s Productivity Gains: Distribution Determines Destiny
AI’s productivity gains will be enormous. This isn’t hype—it’s already happening.
A lawyer who once spent hours drafting contracts now does it in minutes.
A programmer who wrote 100 lines of code a day now writes 1,000.
A designer who created one mockup an hour now creates ten.
But productivity gains are neutral. They don’t automatically improve lives. Their impact depends entirely on how they’re distributed.
If those gains flow upward—to shareholders, executives, and the already wealthy—they deepen inequality.
The lawyer’s firm doesn’t reduce her hours. It just demands she handle ten times as many clients. She burns out faster while partners take home larger bonuses.
The programmer doesn’t work less. He’s just expected to ship ten times as many features. His company’s valuation soars while his quality of life collapses.
The designer doesn’t gain freedom. She just faces higher quotas and tighter deadlines. Her portfolio grows while her mental health deteriorates.
If those gains flow outward—to workers as time, to communities as shared prosperity—they transform societies.
The lawyer works three days a week and spends the other two coaching her daughter’s soccer team and volunteering at a legal aid clinic.
The programmer works four focused days and uses his extra time to learn woodworking, teach coding to kids in his neighborhood, and actually sleep enough to be creative.
The designer has time to pursue personal projects, to experiment without pressure, to remember why she loved making things in the first place.
We’ll become landlords of the AI revolution, collecting rent on ideas while the real transformation happens elsewhere.
Unless we choose differently.
The Time Dividend: Strategy, Not Luxury
The Time Dividend isn’t a nice-to-have. It isn’t a utopian fantasy or a progressive wish list item.
It’s a strategy.
If we want Americans to benefit from AI—not just American corporations—we need to give people back the one resource every innovation requires:
Time to think.
Time to imagine.
Time to build.
Time to care.
When a worker becomes twice as productive through AI assistance, they shouldn’t be forced to produce twice as much output.
They should work half the hours, for the same pay.
That’s not charity. That’s math. That’s claiming the productivity dividend they generated.
That’s how we create the mental space for curiosity, creativity, and courage—the ingredients of every breakthrough, every innovation, every transformation that actually matters.
The Time Dividend ensures AI becomes liberation, not just another layer of extraction.
It distributes progress broadly instead of concentrating it at the top.
It makes sure that Americans experience the AI revolution as creators and shapers of the future, not just consumers of products built by exhausted workers for the benefit of distant shareholders.
It gives us what necessity-driven innovators have—urgency, hunger, the need to solve real problems—while also giving us what space-rich societies have: the bandwidth to solve them wisely.
Two Futures, One Choice
We stand at a fork.
Path One: We repeat history.
We hoard the patents. We maximize short-term returns. We push our workers harder. We measure success by market cap and quarterly earnings.
We burn out our people while competitors who inherited our technology but not our exhaustion find new uses for it.
We watch the real breakthroughs—the ones that make life measurably better for ordinary humans—happen somewhere else.
We end up rich in intellectual property and poor in imagination.
Powerful on paper, irrelevant in practice.
Path Two: We return time to those who make innovation possible.
We reinvest AI’s gains in human well-being.
We let families breathe again, think again, build again.
We create the conditions for both necessity and space—the urgency to solve problems that matter and the wisdom to solve them well.
We measure success not just by what we produce but by how we live.
If we choose the second path, America gets both advantages:
We keep the intellectual property and the innovation dividend.
We become a nation that doesn’t just own the code, but understands what it’s for.
We lead not just in patents filed but in problems solved.
Not just in valuations reached but in lives improved.
Not just in technology developed but in humanity preserved.
That’s the choice before us.
Between extraction and imagination.
Between efficiency and wisdom.
Between renting the future and living in it.
Between owning the algorithms that change everything and being the people those algorithms were supposed to serve.
The storm has passed. The quiet moment is here.
The question is whether we’ll use it to double down on what’s broken, or to build something worthy of the transformation unfolding before us.
The world isn’t waiting for our answer.
It’s already moving.
The only question is whether we’ll move with it—or watch from the sidelines, clutching our patents while the future happens where no one is looking.
This reflection is adapted from Twenty-Five Hours: How to Create a Time-Rich Future in the Age of AI—a book about reclaiming what progress promised but never delivered: more time, more trust, and a more human world.
Der Ingen Ser
De fleste antar at revolusjoner begynner i de rikeste hjørnene av verden – laboratoriene i Silicon Valley, innovasjonshubene i Norden, glass-tårnene i Shenzhen. Vi ser for oss at fremgangen sprer seg utover fra maktens sentre, som ringer i vannet etter en stein i stille sjø.
Logisk. Ordnet. Forutsigbart.
Men historien forteller en annen historie.
Historien er full av overraskelser som får eksperter til å se dumme ut og spådommer til å virke naive. Gjennombruddene blir ofte oppfunnet i rike land, men transformasjonen – den virkelige betydningen av disse gjennombruddene – kommer ofte fra steder ingen fulgte med på.
Fra utkanten. Fra de glemte hjørnene. Fra mennesker som aldri skulle bety noe.
Og akkurat nå, mens USA skynder seg for å sikre eierskap til KI – for å patentere hver algoritme og kontrollere hvert datasett – gjentar vi det samme mønsteret vi har sett hundre ganger før:
Vi kommer til å eie patentene.
Noen andre kommer til å eie fremtiden.
5G-historien nesten ingen forteller
Da 5G ble lansert, var overskriftene forutsigbare. New York, Seoul, Tokyo, London. Analytikere diskuterte patenter og frekvensauksjoner. Teknologiselskaper kriget om standarder, lisensinntekter og kontroll over infrastrukturen.
Historien handlet om makt – hvem som hadde den, hvem som skulle beholde den, og hvem som ville tjene mest.
Men den mest dyptgripende virkningen av 5G skjedde ikke i disse byene.
Den blomstret i steder som nesten ikke hadde noe å begynne med. Steder som ikke engang var en del av samtalen.
I store deler av Afrika, Sør-Asia og Latin-Amerika trengte ikke 5G å konkurrere med det som var der før. Det fantes ingen gamle kobberlinjer å vedlikeholde, ingen monopol som måtte beskyttes, ingen sunkne kostnader eller tunge byråkratiske systemer som hindret forandring.
Hele samfunn hoppet over tiår med utvikling over natten.
En bonde i Kenya fikk sanntidsdata om vær og markedspriser, og gikk fra selvberging til handel.
En student i Bangladesh fikk tilgang til universitetsforelesninger hun tidligere bare kunne drømme om.
En helsearbeider i Peru koblet avsidesliggende landsbyer til spesialister i Lima – og reddet liv som ellers ville gått tapt til avstand og fattig infrastruktur.
Bank ble mobil. Helse ble fjern. Utdanning ble tilgjengelig. Offentlig sektor ble menneskelig igjen – responsiv, transparent, direkte.
Og fordi disse samfunnene ikke var bundet av fortiden, ikke forsvarte det de hadde bygget i går, kunne de ofte innovere raskere og mer radikalt enn nasjonene som hadde oppfunnet teknologien.
Selskapene som eide 5G-patentene tjente milliarder.
Men samfunnene som ga teknologien mening – som brukte den til å møte menneskelige behov i stedet for å maksimere aksjeverdi – var de som endret verden.
Det er mønsteret vi er i ferd med å gjenta med KI.
Bare denne gangen er skalaen mye større. Innsatsen langt høyere. Og gapet mellom patentinnehavere og samfunn som faktisk forandres – potensielt permanent.
Neste sprang vil ikke komme der vi forventer
Vi snakker om KI som om den tilhører Vesten – som om OpenAI, Google og Anthropic er de evige arkitektene av fremtiden. Som om San Francisco og Seattle alltid vil være verdens tyngdepunkt.
Men verden har en vane med å overraske sine selvutnevnte sentrum.
Morgendagens mest banebrytende KI-innovasjoner kommer kanskje ikke fra Palo Alto eller Cambridge. De kan komme fra Lagos, Karachi, Bogotá, Jakarta – eller Oslo.
Fra steder uten gamle systemer å beskytte, uten institusjonell egoisme, uten frykt for å prøve noe helt nytt.
KIs største innvirkning vil ikke skje i datasentrene i Nord-Virginia eller investorkontorene i California.
Den vil eksplodere i områder der utdanningen er ujevn, infrastrukturen svak og byråkratiet tynt – men fantasien sterk.
For når mennesker som aldri før har hatt en stemme plutselig får muligheten til å uttrykke seg – kraftfullt og globalt – når barrierene faller og prisen for å bli hørt nærmer seg null, da endrer ikke verden seg bare.
Den eksploderer.
Det blir ikke datasentrene som endrer alt.
Det blir menneskene vi ikke så.
De som ikke hadde råd til de rette skolene.
De som ikke kunne språket til makten.
De som aldri ble tatt på alvor.
Inntil nå.
Innovasjonens paradoks: Nød og rom
Ekte innovasjon – den som endrer samfunn, ikke bare produkter – skjer når to tilsynelatende motstridende krefter møtes:
Nød og rom.
Nød: Forvandlingens motor
Nød driver oppfinnelser der gamle systemer ikke virker – eller aldri har eksistert.
En tenåring i Nairobi bygger et mobilt betalingssystem fordi det ikke finnes banker i nærheten, og kontanter er farlige å bære.
En lærer i Mumbai oppretter uformelle læringsnettverk fordi skolene er overfylte og utilgjengelige.
En snekker i São Paulo organiserer hele nabolaget sitt via WhatsApp fordi det offentlige systemet ikke fungerer.
Dette er ikke små forbedringer.
Dette er nye verdener, født av mangel.
Når du gir disse innovatørene tilgang til KI – verktøy som lar dem tenke i stor skala, bygge uten kode, oversette uten mellomledd, nå ut globalt uten portvoktere – kan resultatet bli eksplosivt.
Ikke eksplosivt i finansverdenens forstand av «enhjørninger».
Men i menneskelig forstand: millioner av liv endret.
Rom: Visdommens grunn
Så finnes det den andre kraften – ofte oversett: rom til å tenke.
Land med sterk sosial infrastruktur – Norge, Danmark, New Zealand, deler av Tyskland og Nederland – har dette i overflod.
Når folk jobber 25–35 timer i uka i stedet for 50–60, når helse og omsorg ikke er kilder til konstant bekymring, når familier har beskyttet tid sammen uten å ofre trygghet – da får de mental kapasitet til å stille bedre spørsmål.
Ikke: «Hvordan går vi raskere?»
Men: «Hvor er det vi egentlig skal?»
Ikke: «Hvordan konkurrerer vi?»
Men: «Hva konkurrerer vi for?»
Rom skaper betingelser for visdom, for langsiktig tenkning, for etisk refleksjon.
Nød skaper handling.
Rom skaper innsikt.
Begge trengs for virkelig fremgang.
De samfunnene som vil blomstre i KI-tiden, er de som dyrker begge deler – desperasjonen til å løse virkelige problemer og rommet til å gjøre det klokt.
Amerikas blinde flekk
Her er den ubehagelige sannheten:
Amerika har nå ingen av delene.
Vi er for investert i gamle systemer til å være desperate, og for utslitte til å være kloke.
Vi bygger ikke fra bunnen som i Lagos, der nødvendigheten driver innovasjon.
Vi tar ikke lange lunsjer som i Oslo, der tid gir refleksjon.
Vi driver en økonomi fra 1900-tallet i et tempo fra 2100-tallet – prøver å fornye oss uten tid til å tenke, konkurrere mens vi brenner ut.
Arbeidere er utmattet. Familier presset til bristepunktet. Kreativiteten kveles av overarbeid og konstant bekymring.
Vi står i fare for å eie algoritmene, men miste samfunnet.
Produktivitetsgevinster: Fordeling avgjør skjebnen
KIs produktivitetsgevinster er enorme. Det er ikke en spådom, det skjer allerede.
Men slike gevinster er nøytrale. Deres virkning avhenger av hvordan de fordeles.
Hvis de flyter oppover, til aksjonærer og ledere, øker ulikheten.
Hvis de flyter utover, som tid og trygghet, kan de forandre samfunn.
Når en arbeider blir dobbelt så produktiv, bør hun ikke tvinges til å produsere dobbelt så mye.
Hun bør få halvparten så lange dager – til samme lønn.
Det er ikke idealisme. Det er matematikk.
Det er å kreve tilbake den produktivitetsdividenden hun selv har skapt.
Tidsutbyttet: Strategi, ikke luksus
Tidsutbyttet er ikke en drøm. Det er en strategi.
Hvis vi vil at mennesker – ikke bare selskaper – skal nyte godt av KI, må vi gi folk tilbake den eneste ressursen all innovasjon krever:
Tid til å tenke.
Tid til å bygge.
Tid til å bry seg.
Når vi gjør det, skaper vi rommet for nysgjerrighet, kreativitet og mot – byggesteinene for enhver virkelig forandring.
Tidsutbyttet sørger for at KI blir frigjøring, ikke utmattelse.
At fremgang fordeles bredt i stedet for å samles på toppen.
At vi opplever teknologien som mennesker, ikke som maskindeler.
To fremtider – ett valg
Vi står ved et veiskille.
Sti én: Vi gjentar historien.
Vi eier patentene. Vi tjener rask profitt. Vi pusher folk hardere.
Vi brenner ut menneskene mens de som arver teknologien vår, finner nye måter å bruke den på.
Sti to: Vi gir tid tilbake til dem som gjør innovasjon mulig.
Vi reinvesterer KIs gevinster i menneskelig velvære.
Vi lar familier puste igjen, tenke igjen, skape igjen.
Hvis vi velger den andre veien, får vi begge fordelene:
Vi beholder eierskapet – og vinner innovasjonen.
Vi blir en nasjon som ikke bare eier koden, men forstår hva den er til for.
Mellom utvinning og fantasi.
Mellom effektivitet og visdom.
Mellom å leie fremtiden – og å leve den.
Denne refleksjonen er hentet fra Twenty-Five Hours: How to Create a Time-Rich Future in the Age of AI – en bok om å gjenvinne det teknologien lovet, men aldri leverte: mer tid, mer tillit og en mer menneskelig verden.
Better Places 