Artefacts contribute to harms in many ways, and not just in the sense that they produce many different types of harm. Rather, they harm in different ways through the different types of relationships they enter into with people and other beings. Different human– technology relationships activate different causal powers. The same unergonomic chair, for instance, might be implicated in a range of harms. Sitting on it repeatedly may cause its user lower back pain. Stubbing your toe on one of its legs may cause excruciating toe pain. And hitting someone over the head with it will cause great injury. Each of these harms hinges on very different relationships between the chair and the individuals who encounter it. In the first example, the chair harms its user, or, more precisely, it harms the individual employing one of its intended affordances. This is not the case in the second example. When we unintentionally stub our toe on a chair or table leg, the harm we experience emerges not from using one of the chair's affordances, nor from us intentionally entering any kind of relation with the chair leg. Finally, when a person wields a chair as a weapon, they are employing several of its affordances to intentionally harm another; harm emerges not from a dyadic relation between the technology and its user, but from a triadic relation between the chair, the person who wields it, and the person who is attacked.

If we want to understand the different roles technologies can play in harmful events, we need to understand the structure of relationships between technologies, humans and other beings. Moreover, we need to understand how particular relations between people and technical artefacts shape not only their perceptions, beliefs and experiences, but also their actions.