How technologies harm : a relational approach / Mark A. Wood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wood, Mark A. (Lecturer in criminology), author.

Series:

Studies in social harm.

Studies in Social Harm Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technology--Social aspects.

Technology.

Criminology.

Sociology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (267 pages)

Place of Publication:

Bristol, UK : Bristol University Press, 2025.

Summary:

Technologies contribute to harms in a variety of ways, but can we ever say they are harmful in-and-of-themselves?This book offers a new way to understand how technologies, while not intrinsically harmful, are laden with values and dispositions that can contribute to negative outcomes.

Contents:

Front Cover

Half Title

Series

How Technologies Harm: A Relational Approach

Copyright Page

Dedication

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Technology-​harm relations

What is technology?

An outline of what's to come

Part I Understanding Harm

1 What Is Social Harm?

What we should want from an account of social harm

Yar's recognition-​based account

Pemberton's needs-​based account

Raymen's human flourishing account

Can flourishing be harm's currency?

Conclusion

2 The Nature of Harm

The counterfactual comparative account

Causal and non-​comparative accounts

The negative influence on wellbeing account

What does it mean for a harm to be 'social'?

The currency, structure and medium of harm

Part II Understanding Technology

3 Instruments, Extensions, Affordances

Technologies as neutral instruments

Technologies as capability extenders

Technologies as action afforders

Mediation MIA?

4 Technology as Practice and Actant

Actor-​network theory

Stepping away from socio-​technical conflation

Technology as practice

Anti-​anti-​essentialism

5 Postphenomenology and Technological Mediation

What puts the post in postphenomenology?

Technological mediation

Human-​technology relations

Moral mediation

Critiquing postphenomenology

The antisocial lives of things

Technology and wellbeing

Part III The Technology-​Harm Relations Framework

6 An Overview of the Framework

The causal dispositions of technologies

Bad for and harmful to: extrinsically harmful dispositions

Relations with technology

The intentional structure of relations with technology

The instrumentality and generativity of technology

The temporality and emergence of technology-​harm relations

The technology-​harm relations framework: five dimensions

The form of harm implicating one or more technologies

The technology-​harm relations implicated in a harmful event

The modes taken by technology-​harm relations

The level of emergence at which the relation plays a part in harm

The dispositional powers underpinning a relation and its contribution to a harmful event

Excavating technology-​harm relations

7 Design Modes

Technical functions and their harmful consequences -​ unintended, unanticipated, both, or neither?

A typology of design modes

Functional: intended functions, anticipated harms

Hyperfunctional: intended functions, unanticipated harms

Parafunctional: harm by accidental functions and mediations

Malfunctional: harm by technologies failing to function

Dysfunctional: harm by technological discrimination

Design teams and shared intentions

Feature, bug, other

8 Translation, Infusion, Zemiosis

Harm translation

Infusion

Zemiosis

Mechanisms of zemiosis

Notes:

Building bridges between design and use

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781529247091

9781529247107

1-5292-4708-X

1-5292-4710-1

OCLC:

1543211772