CONCEPT
The Global Deployment Gap
Edgerton's term for the structural distance between a technology's existence and its actual use by the populations whose lives it is supposed to improve — the dark space on every map of technological adoption.
The deployment gap is the central fact of global technological history and the fact innovation narratives are structurally incapable of seeing, because innovation narratives begin at the bright spots and never look at the dark. Across every technology of the past two centuries, the gap between theoretical availability and actual deployment has been measured in decades and distributed unequally along lines of wealth, geography, infrastructure, and institutional capacity. The automobile was theoretically available from the moment Ford began production; it took decades to reach widespread deployment in wealthy countries and remains limited today across much of the developing world. The personal computer followed the same arc. The internet followed the same arc. AI will follow the same arc.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The infrastructure requirements determine the deployment timeline. AI requires reliable electricity, high-speed connectivity, expensive hardware, specialized language competency, and institutional support structures. It is, in infrastructural terms, closer to the automobile