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The public’s awareness of noise and vibration forms a significant barrier to further development of railways. This chapter begins with a short introduction to the main fundamental aspects of acoustics, including decibels, frequency analysis, the propagation of sound with distance and common measurement quantities. The main sources of railway noise are discussed, including rolling noise, impact noise, curve squeal and aerodynamic noise. Simple calculation procedures are described that can be used to assess the impact of railway noise and to compare it with legal limits. The final section is devoted to ground vibration, which is a related form of environmental disturbance.

‘What is the meaning of the process of body quantification?’ – This is the central question of this chapter. With it, the author intends to question and analyse the way the body relates to new technologies and new technical procedures, and how these depend on the body itself to constitute themselves as mediating cultural forms. To make this enquiry feasible, the author shall critically examine the status of ‘object’ to which the body has been relegated by the myths of quantification, notably those concerning the universal symbolic character of numbers and measurement techniques. If the body is considered as a mere ‘quantified object’, then it is unlikely to be distinguished from other objects subjected to the same process. Consequently, it will easily tend to support the imaginary of technological determinism that prevails in our societies. Health trackers for personal use are, today, a good example of how the body is a fundamental element of such imaginary, since the feeling of control that they nurture in their users is also connected with the possibility of sharing information about the body itself. Given all these factors, the author intends to argue that, instead of being a simple quantified object, the body is, for new quantification technologies (namely those related to self-care), a ‘medium of the media’, insofar as it reinforces the effects of technological mediation processes, and potentialises the increased digital convergence of media. Recognising this means, finally, that the imaginary of quantification and associated techno-myths are also stimulated and reproduced by an extra-discursive somatic level inherent in the empirical use we make of technological devices.