CONCEPT
Agent vs. Cause
Eisenstein's surgical analytical distinction: a cause produces an effect directly, a condition creates the space within which effects become possible — the move that makes her framework applicable to every subsequent communication revolution, including AI.
The distinction between causing and conditioning is the most important analytical move in Eisenstein's framework. She did not argue that the printing press caused the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the Scientific Revolution. She argued it conditioned them — created the space in which they could occur. A cause produces an effect directly. A condition creates the space within which effects become possible. The printing press did not produce the heliocentric theory; Copernicus arrived at that through astronomical observation and mathematical reasoning. But the press created the conditions under which Copernicus's work could be disseminated in standardized form, compared against Ptolemy's tables, and subjected to the collaborative criticism that eventually produced Kepler and Newton. The distinction preserves both the causal significance of the technology and the agency of the human beings who used it.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Eisenstein's distinction was developed in response to two errors she saw in the historiography of her time.