The Society for the History of Technology (GTG) and the Society for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology (GWMT) announce the topic of their joint annual conference in Vienna "Scales, norms, and limit values in times of (digital) change."
Technical Museum Vienna | University of Vienna, 17.-19. September 2021Scales, norms and limit values regulate procedures within production lines and transnational infrastructures; they pervade hospital wards and university lectures; they fill scientific journals and bureaucratic regulations. Scales occur in science, medicine and technology alike, and have become ubiquitous in everyday life. Scale readings help to control devices and machines. They are often the interface that users rely on. Norms, for the most part, are based on combined scales, for example technical measures and medical indicators. This is true regardless in which format a standard was defined (DIN, ISO, TGL or the ГОСТ-formats of the former USSR). Limit values are legal and technical specifications; they play an important role in long-term planning, but also in risk communication and the regulation of public life. Not least, the format of this planned conference depends crucially on the R-value in late summer. Limit values make it possible to read the environment in terms of infectiousness, toxicity or radiation exposure. But how are threshold values implemented? Does the »counter-knowledge« of citizens’ action committees or the citizen science movement contribute to their formulation?
