Usuarios e innovaciónla apropiación de la tecnología como factor de desarrollo epistémico

Abstract

Knowledge society fosters new models of distributed, self-managed and autonomous innovation. Such models emerge, among other reasons, because the technologically-based resources for knowledge production are, in fact, being appropriated by groups of citizens that tend to adapt and modify them according to their own needs and tasks within their virtual communities. Freesoftware communities stand out as the most significant and successful instance of such kind of innovation within the technological field. Within the scientific field, as well, the appropriation of the digital technologies bycommunities of scientists is also achieving a general widespread availability of scientific sources for all kinds of citizens, by means of open access publishing, open data bases, scientific free-software, etc. All these may well provide new encouragement for social innovation in this field; a new participation model that would help narrow current breaches in knowledge production, making possible, on the one hand, the independent development of scientific capabilities in communities located in diverse regions, for the benefit of their own contextual needs and encouraging, on the other, the proximity between science and citizens so that the latter may count on scientific systems and resources to analyze, criticize and control the risks taken in the implementation, in daily life, of new techno-scientific processes.