“The conditions of the world and of nations do not remain upon a single course. They vary with days and ages, passing from one state to another.” ~ Ibn Khaldun
Countries are racing to deploy artificial intelligence across education, government and the economy. They buy the same models, hire the same companies and publish similar strategies, then expect similar results.
Yet a state can acquire an AI model in months; it cannot acquire reliable data, skilled employees, public trust or an administration capable of redesigning work at the same speed. The tool is the same. Why does its impact vary so greatly between societies?
Part of the answer may lie in a dimension we routinely neglect: time. I do not mean the time measured by a clock or printed at the top of an official document. I mean the time within things: the time a structure requires to take shape, and the time it will require to change. What happens to our understanding of societies if we treat time as an internal dimension of their institutions and ideas, rather than merely as a framework in which events are arranged?
For the purposes of analysis, time is a relationship we discern through change, not an independent substance we can observe. We do not see time. We see the sun move, hands turn around a clock, bodies age and things pass from one condition to another. Without change, one moment could not be distinguished from the next.
This raises a corresponding question: can a social structure be understood from its present appearance alone?
When we describe a society, we speak of its state, economy, universities, laws and ideas of justice and authority. We tend to view these as objects laid out on a single plane. We place one constitution beside another, one university beside another, and one election beside another, then assume that similarity of form indicates similarity of substance.
But a structure does not exist only in space. It also exists in time. It emerged through a long process and bears the marks of the path it travelled, the obstacles it met, the interests it established and the ideas that gave it meaning. If space tells us where an institution is, time tells us what is inside it.
Two universities may resemble each other in their buildings, degrees and regulations. Yet one may be the product of a long history of scholarly autonomy; the other may have been created principally to expand education and staff the state. Two laws may contain nearly identical provisions, yet one follows a social transformation that secured recognition of its underlying principle, while the other precedes the society expected to put that principle into practice. The form is the same, but the time accumulated within it is different. Its function and effects will differ too.
Nor do all structures within a society move at the same speed. There is the time of the event: a decision is announced, a government changes, a crisis erupts. There is the time of extended change: demographic shifts, economic cycles and the movement of skills and interests. Then there is the time of structures formed over generations: the state, education, political culture and the distribution of wealth.
Technology may change within months, law over years and institutions over decades. Habits and ideas about authority and knowledge may take generations. A system may die in legislation yet survive in practice. A law may be born in the official gazette long before it is born in social relations.
This is why the effects of artificial intelligence will not be determined by the power of the model alone. They will depend on whether the surrounding institutions can reorganise education, work and administration around it. Two states may acquire the same technology on the same day and obtain very different results because they have not introduced it into the same social time.
This does not mean that one society lives in the past and another in the future, as though all societies travelled along a single road. A society’s technology may move rapidly while its laws change slowly. Its economy may be integrated into the world’s newest networks while its relations of authority preserve older forms. The pace may vary further across classes, regions and institutions. A society does not inhabit one time; several times coexist within it.
When an institution moves from one society to another, the history that formed it does not necessarily travel with it. Citizenship, the state, the university and the market are not definitions that escaped from books. They are outcomes of particular conflicts, needs and historical paths. The error deepens when the path that produced an institution is presented as universal, so that its different operation elsewhere is attributed to backwardness rather than to a different structure and history.
Failure to see this produces an error of understanding, followed by an error of policy. If policymakers assume that an institutional form carries within itself the conditions required for it to work, they will mistake creating an institution for creating its function, passing a law for changing behaviour, and acquiring technology for acquiring capability.
They see what has happened, but not the time required for an event to become a structure, a structure to become a practice, and a practice to alter how people understand themselves.
It is equally mistaken to explain a long movement through a short event. A crisis that appears sudden may be the culmination of an accumulation we failed to notice. A system that looks stable may have lost the forces that sustained it long ago. Conversely, strategies and decisions may proliferate without altering the structure that keeps reproducing the same outcomes. A great deal of activity does not necessarily produce change. A wheel can spin without gripping the ground.
This is where time becomes indispensable to the observer, historian and policymaker. It is not enough to ask what happened. We must ask at what timescale it should be understood. Is it a passing event, a sign of a wider transition or the visible effect of a long structural movement? What is moving quickly, and what is resisting change? What past continues to operate in the present after its names and slogans have disappeared?
Policymakers must also distinguish between the time of a decision and the time of its effects. A law may be passed in a day, while the capacity to enforce it takes years to build. An institution may be established quickly, while forming the people who give it purpose takes a generation. A decision can set change in motion, but it cannot abolish everything between a beginning and its result.
None of this makes the slowness of structures an excuse for inaction. Action itself enters the movement of society. It accelerates some processes, resists others and creates new possibilities. But its effect depends on understanding where it stands within that movement. A decision may be right in its objective but wrong in its timing. It may be timely yet mistaken about the duration and conditions required for success.
To think seriously about time is not merely to know when something happened. It is to understand the time it took to form and the time it will take to change. Things carry not only their visible forms, but also their ages and trajectories. To see a structure without seeing its time is to know what it looks like without yet knowing what it is.
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
