In the first two parts of this book, I surveyed accounts of harm and technology to clear the ground for a new approach to examining how technologies contribute to social harms. My main purpose in Part I was to arrive at a watertight account of social harm, but in it, I also clarified key distinctions in the metaphysics of harm that have a bearing on understanding the technology– harm nexus. Among these distinctions are the need to distinguish between pro tanto and overall harm, and between extrinsic and intrinsic harm. The latter is particularly important in examining the technology– harm nexus, as it clarifies an important but often elided distinction in discussions about technology. Though certain technologies – such as guns and nuclear weapons – are described as harmful, we need to be very specific in what sense they are so. Namely, such technologies can be described as extrinsically harmful – no technology is intrinsically harmful, that is, harmful in and of itself.

That technologies are extrinsically harmful does not, however, entail that they are value neutral. As detailed in Part II, powerful arguments have been levelled against the Value Neutrality Thesis of technology. Treating technology as a value- neutral instrument or means strips artefacts of their effectivity or generativity; the many ways they induce and otherwise contribute to states of affairs. Some have referred to this as technology's ‘agency’: technologies are not mere means but mediators – they possess an ‘ontological force’ (Hoel and van der Tuin 2013: 188) or generativity that extends well beyond their instrumentality (for example, Krasman, 2025). Several of the perspectives surveyed in Part II offer powerful insights on particular facets of this generativity.